Missed chances doom clash with Tide.
Mond sacked 7 times as national champs impose will with ease
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher called a timeout with three seconds remaining at Alabama and the Aggies threatening to score, and in Fisher’s ideal world stopping play would have impacted the outcome.
It didn’t — far from it — because the No. 22 Aggies already trailed the top-ranked Crimson Tide 4523, what three seconds later would be the final score. Why didn’t Fisher just let time run out and appease restless, suddenly-booing Alabama fans?
Simple: He intends to practice what he preaches at A&M, and that means “playing the next play.”
“You’re trying to score points,” Fisher said. “The game ain’t over. … Why would you not? You tell your kids to go play every play hard, give everything you’ve got, and you’re going to let the clock run out?
“That isn’t what competitors do, and that isn’t what Texas A&M is going to do. Texas A&M is going to play hard until the horn blows.”
The horn finally blew mercifully on the Aggies (2-2, 0-1 Southeastern Conference) and quarterback Kellen Mond, who was sacked seven times by a swaggering Crimson Tide defense. A&M shuffled out of Tuscaloosa heartened by Mond’s resiliency, and troubled by a multitude of breakdowns on both sides of the ball.
“He’s very poised,” A&M center Erik McCoy said of the Aggies’ sophomore quarterback. “Even when he was taking hits, he was getting right back up like it was nothing. He’s really taking control of this offense.”
Poor overall offensive line play and a porous secondary have been A&M bugaboos long before Fisher arrived at A&M in December from Florida State, and they continued to haunt the program against the Crimson Tide.
“We can definitely improve in a lot of areas, mainly in our pass protections,” McCoy said.
Mond said the Alabama defense was mixing up coverages and “disguising some stuff,” but that’s what they expected.
“It was a lot of stuff we saw in practice, but there was a little bit of inconsistency from me,” said Mond, who was 16-of-33 for 196 with a touchdown and two interceptions. “I’ve just got to trust my eyes.”
Tackling again an issue
Alabama (4-0, 2-0) led 21-13 with a little less than two minutes remaining in the first half when things quickly unraveled for the Aggies, especially defensively. Simple tackling was an issue for A&M throughout the four quarters, but Fisher said it was more than that against Alabama’s dynamic sophomore quarterback Tua Tagovailoa and his fleet of standout receivers.
“You say ‘tackling,’ but it’s also assignments and how you read things,” Fisher said. “So when the ball is thrown you’re closer to a guy when you go to make a tackle. It’s not just tackling; it’s the points before we get to the tackling point.
“Open-field tackling in today’s football is critical, and we have to continue to get better at it.”
Alabama coach Nick Saban, still relentless at 66, improved to 13-0 against his former assistants, the last prior to Saturday coming in the national title game against one-time Crimson Tide defensive coordinator Kirby Smart, now in his third year at Georgia. Fisher was Saban’s offensive coordinator at LSU from 2000-04.
“We scored a lot of points, but we didn’t really control the game,” an unfailingly hard-to-please Saban said. “We didn’t control the line of scrimmage.”
A&M’s defense was hit by the ejection of senior safety Donovan Wilson in the first quarter, his second ejection in four games this season for targeting.
Tagovailoa went to work on Wilson’s replacement, freshman Leon O’Neal, and everyone else on the backpedaling Aggies defense.
“We missed a lot of tackles,” A&M defensive lineman Kingsley Keke said. “We didn’t do a good job of that. That has to get fixed.”
The Aggies, coming off their first road game, will catch their breath and take on Arkansas at 11 a.m. Saturday at AT&T Stadium in Arlington. While the Aggies have lost six consecutive games to the Crimson Tide, they’ve won six straight against the Razorbacks, who are in their first season under former SMU coach Chad Morris.
An exclamation point
Late in Saturday’s game, Fisher replaced Mond with backup Nick Starkel, while Channelview’s Jalen Hurts already had replaced Tagovailoa with Alabama’s lead safe. Fisher called the final timeout, and an irate Alabama defense planted Starkel on his back on the game’s final play, an incomplete pass.
The crowd roared at the emphatic exclamation mark, and the Crimson Tide defense celebrated more than it otherwise would have with time expired. Mond said don’t expect Fisher to change that approach, no matter the foe.
“We’ll continue to play until the last play, it didn’t really matter what the score was,” Mond said. “If it had been a tie game, we would have done the same thing. He’s not going to just let the clock run out.”