THE TIDE TURNS
Aggies let opportunity slip away with a shift in momentum during third-quarter stretch
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — After Texas A&M missed on its chance to defeat the nation’s No. 1 team on Saturday, Aggies safety Justin Evans noticed a handful of other things missing in the locker room afterward, as well, compared to recent seasons.
Bickering and blaming, for starters.
“It’s more of a brotherhood,” Evans said of his teammates banding together following their first setback of the season. “We just lost, but there’s no fussing, arguing going on in the locker room. We’ve got each other’s backs.”
Top-ranked Alabama defeated sixth-ranked A&M33-14 in a ballyhooed Bryant-Denny Stadium showdown the visitors actually led in the second half, before the Crimson Tide began testing the Aggies’ loyalties, and along the way revealed A&M has work to do if it intends to compete for its first Southeastern Conference title.
“Five minutes really dictated the game,” A&M coach Kevin Sumlin said. “Give (Alabama) credit because they made the plays.”
Fumble for TD pivotal
Should A&M (6-1, 4-1 SEC) finish the season strong but miss out on the four-team College Football Playoff, the Aggies will look back on that five-plus minutes as their most miserable and mystifying of the season. A&M trailed 13-0 in the first half but grabbed a 14-13 lead early in the third quarter, following a 25-yard touchdown pass from Trevor Knight to Christian Kirk.
Alabama (8-0, 5-0) regained the lead on a 4-yard touchdown pass from freshman Jalen Hurts to Calvin Ridley about six minutes later. With a little less than a minute remaining in the third quarter, A&M’s most exasperating play of the season occurred.
Alabama linebacker Ryan Anderson caused A&M running back Keith Ford to fumble, and Crimson Tide defensive end Jonathan Allen scooped up the ball and rumbled 30 yards for a touchdown. In that fateful span, A&M had gone from a 14-13 lead to a 26-14 deficit, and the Aggies failed to score again.
“That kind of turned the tide in the game,” said Knight, who finished 14-of-31 for 164 yards with two touchdowns and an interception. “We had five to six minutes where we didn’t play good football, and they took advantage of it.”
Knight was sacked five times, including twice by star line- backer Tim Williams, while the Aggies sacked Hurts three times. None of those takedowns was by touted defensive ends Daeshon Hall and Myles Garrett, however, although Garrett managed a game-high 3½ tackles for loss.
Hurts, a former Channelview standout, iced the game early in the fourth quarter with a dazzling 37-yard touchdown run, and A&M was left to wonder “what if” about that pivotal stretch during the third quarter.
“We played a great team in Alabama,” A&M offensive tackle Avery Gennesy said. “We know there are things we need to fix, and we’ll fix those.”
The nation’s most publicized game of the weekend had a surplus of storylines, from A&M beating a top-ranked Alabama team in Tuscaloosa in 2012, to the Crimson Tide pounding the Aggies 59-0 two years ago in Bryant-Denny, to the transfer Knight leading Oklahoma to a Sugar Bowl victory over Alabama following the 2013 season. None of it mattered after kickoff, Knight said following A&M’s fourth straight loss in the series.
“Everything speaks between the lines,” he said. “We didn’t get it done, and it hurts. But we’re going to keep moving forward.”
A look ahead’
The Aggies, who started the season unranked, still have plenty to play for and aren’t necessarily out of the playoff picture based on a host of scenarios. The mighty Crimson Tide, the defending national champions, have worked over all of their opponents this season, save for a 4843 escape at Mississippi on Sept. 17, and their 20 consecutive wins mark the nation’s longest streak.
“I was really proud of the way our players, after going down 1413, played in the second half,” said coach Nick Saban, who has led Alabama to four national titles in the last seven years. “After we got in that position, I thought it was great competitive character on their part to persevere. We scored on offense, we scored on defense, and we controlled the ball.”
Now A&M will rely on its ability to persevere, with a favorable schedule to close out the regular season. The Aggies play host to New Mexico State on Saturday, play at stumbling Mississippi State the following weekend and then close it out with home games against Mississippi, UTSA and LSU.
“We’re going to be in some (tight) situations like that from here on out,” Sumlin said of the big swing in momentum in the third quarter on Saturday, “and hopefully we learn from that.” brent.zwerneman@chron.com twitter.com/brentzwerneman