Aggies living off comebacks
Meat of schedule ahead, beginning with No. 1 Alabama.
COLLEGE STATION — First, the water at the stadium went out.
Then, the Kyle Field clocks malfunctioned.
A pall of concerned silence fell over the place when a South Carolina player was downed with a head injury and taken off on a stretcher after a 15-minute delay but he was later moving his limbs at a College Station hospital.
But finally, everything returned to working order, which was good enough for a tense, 24-17 Aggies victory over an average South Carolina team Saturday night before an aroused, announced crowd of 96,430 fans although a fifth of those must have been using the rest rooms elsewhere.
All of which raises the question of just how good is 4-1 Texas A&M?
Good enough to be 5-0, but for one of the all-time collapses against UCLA? No, not that good because really good teams don’t give up 35 points in 18 minutes.
Good enough to be ranked? Probably not although the Aggies at least deserve some consideration.
Good enough to upset No. 1 Alabama here next week? Hey, there’s drug-testing for those kinds of assumptions.
But Kevin Sumlin’s team is improving when it could have just gone belly up after blowing a 44-10 lead with 4:08 left in the third quarter of the opener with UCLA. For one thing, it’s shown it doesn’t mind that kind of adversity and, in fact, almost seems to embrace it. Saturday’s win marked the Aggies’ third consecutive come-frombehind victory, so deficits are nothing new.
A&M trailed Louisiana-Lafayette by a touchdown at halftime. It was behind Arkansas by two touchdowns in Arlington. And this time they overcame a 10-point deficit against South Carolina, which has a strong defense but zero running game and an average quarterback, who incredibly ranked third in the quarterback-poor SEC in passing yardage. The Aggies sure came out of it with confidence.
“We know how well we can play,” said A&M’s outstanding linebacker Otaro Alaka, who had two sacks. “We just have to cut down on our mistakes.”
Alabama’s a different animal, of course.
But the Aggies are showing progress and unveiled an aggressive defense that sacked South Carolina’s Jake Bentley seven times — including four times in a span of six plays over two series — had 12 tackles for losses and allowed the Gamecocks a scant 23 yards on the ground in 26 attempts for a feeble 0.9 yards a carry average.
Not overly blessed with tremendous, proven firepower on offense other than the little-used Christian Kirk, A&M is making the most of a solid rushing attack behind Keith Ford and Trayveon Williams and gets enough out of its dink-and-dunk passing game to keep defenses honest.
Mostly conservative-minded, the Aggies ran the ball 48 times and threw it just 27 but still held the ball for eight more minutes than the Gamecocks (3-2), who lost to Kentucky at home two weeks ago and nipped Louisiana Tech by a point last week. Heck, A&M even punted on a fourth down from South Carolina’s 37. But it was another win.
“We took another step tonight with a tough SEC game,” Sumlin said. “We’re getting great effort. Their effort has been phenomenal. We just got to keep getting better. As you can see, they’re capable of being pretty good.”
So where does A&M go from here?
It’s clear A&M has a strong pass rush, one that has racked up 20 sacks in five games, and a balanced offense, and the Aggies can benefit from a watered-down SEC with a declining LSU and a pair of struggling teams from Mississippi down the road. But that’s later.
Now facing the meat of the schedule with back-toback games against Alabama and Florida and then Auburn two weeks later, the Aggies know they’re approaching the normal swoon phase of their season. If they’re going to equal or better the 8-5 record that has become Sumlin’s trademark, it’s pretty clear he has to exploit Kellen Mond’s athleticism and running ability more and keep blitzing like crazy to compensate for a weak secondary, safety Armani Watts notwithstanding.
Mond can be an electric runner, elusive and swift-footed. His 79-yard run helped ignite the Aggies’ comeback against Arkansas, and he ran for another 95 yards on 16 carries to alter this game’s momentum. Sumlin doesn’t trust Mond to throw downfield or over the middle all that often, but the true freshman’s scrambles spurred A&M on the tying scoring drive early in the fourth quarter and incited the home crowd as well.
“He’s escaping pressure and making things happen with his legs,” center Erik McCoy said of Mond.
A&M will need a whole lot more of Mond to give the unbeaten Crimson Tide a game. He could be the difference in this team turning the corner.
“His growth is coming fast,” Sumlin said, “but maybe not as fast as he would like.”
The same could be said for this program, which is showing signs of growth but has shown those signs before.
So maybe it was pure coincidence that the Kyle Field public-address system played “Dixieland Delight” by the band Alabama as the final fans filed out. Hey, Aggies can dream, can’t they?