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Texas A&M football: It’s time for the Aggies to prove something, and Saturday provides the stage
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Did we hear Jimbo Fisher correctly in his press conference following the Aggies’ 30-17 victory over South Carolina on Saturday at Kyle Field?
“We’re one game away from that goal of being bowl-eligible,” Fisher was heard to say after Texas A&M improved to 5-3 for the season (3-2 in SEC play).
I’m trying to remember the last time I heard Nick Saban say that bowl eligibility was a goal.
This is Fisher’s 6th season in Aggieland. Becoming bowl eligible should be a given, not a goal, at this point. But in that one single sentence, Fisher summed up his tenure in College Station.
And here we thought that $100 million was going toward a national championship, when all along it only bought the possibility of becoming bowl eligible with a grand prize of traveling down the road to Houston for a berth in the Texas Bowl.
The Aggies need 1 more victory over their final 4 games to accomplish that goal, and with 1 last cupcake (Abilene Christian) remaining on the schedule, it seems like a foregone conclusion.
Not much more than that can be expected based on how the season has gone so far. The Aggies’ 5 victories have come against New Mexico, UL-Monroe, Auburn, Arkansas and South Carolina. Not one of those teams has a winning record, and combined they are 13-27.
Yes, it’s an improvement over last year’s 5-7 record, but I’m not sure this team is any better than that one. The Aggies really haven’t proven anything in 2023. The numbers have improved slightly, but the program has not advanced an inch.
If Fisher and the Aggies intend on proving something, the opportunity presents itself on Saturday when they travel to Oxford to take on No. 11 Ole Miss. You want to prove something, win a football game on the road. That’s something the Aggies haven’t done since October 2021. They’ve dropped 8 straight true road games.
Texas A&M hasn’t beaten a ranked team on the road since opening the 2014 season with a 52-28 victory at No. 9 South Carolina.
It seems like in each of the last few years. Fisher and the Aggies have come up with a big win to salvage an otherwise disappointing season. Could Saturday be that big game for 2023? Last year it was the big win in the regular season finale over an LSU team headed to the SEC Championship Game. The year before that it was the major upset of No. 1 Alabama.
But both of those were at Kyle Field. On Saturday, the Aggies must do something they haven’t done in nearly a decade. Now that would be an accomplishment. That would certainly prove something.
The oddsmakers are giving the Aggies a fighting chance. They have Ole Miss as just a 4.5-point favorite.
The defense will keep Texas A&M in this game. Now if the offense could just generate some production, especially in the 2nd half. The Aggies have been outscored 39-15 in the 2nd half over the past 3 games, with all of Texas A&M’s points coming from field goals. Putting the ball in the end zone once in a while would be a big lift.
But the OL is going to have to play better (where have we heard that before) and QB Max Johnson will have to get the ball out of his hand a little quicker and into the arms of his many playmakers against what has been a very average Rebels defense.
Yes, if the Aggies intend on salvaging another disappointing season with that one big-game victory, Saturday appears to be set up for just such an occasion.
Glenn Sattell is an award-winning freelance writer for Saturday Down South.
