Matt Stinchcomb: Texas A&M is the ‘next center of gravity’ in the SEC

ESPN’s Matt Stinchcomb believes that while the wins may not be there in 2019, the Texas A&M Aggies will become the next elite football program in the SEC.

Labor Day Weekend will be here in a few weeks. That means college football will once again be at the forefront of the national sports landscape. Nowhere will that be more on display than in the Southeastern United States, where SEC football is king.

During SEC Media Days in Birmingham, ESPN’s Matt Stinchcomb spoke with FanSided on behalf of the Allstate AFCA Good Works Team about the upcoming 2019 SEC season.

Stinchcomb was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2018 after a stellar career playing offensive tackle for the University of Georgia in the late 1990s. He would go to play seven years in the NFL after being a first-round pick by the Oakland Raiders in the 1998 NFL Draft.

Two things stood out in my conversation with him. “The SEC is a line of scrimmage league”, with two blue-blood programs in the Auburn Tigers and the Georgia Bulldogs having arguably the best defensive and offensive lines in the country, respectively.

“Will we see a rushing attack more reminiscent of the dominant, top-tier Auburn football teams? I think a lot of that hinges on what they get at the quarterback position.”

His other major point of emphasis was this. While the Texas A&M Aggies will certainly have their work cut out for them this fall due to a brutal schedule, he believes that Jimbo Fisher’s program will be the “next center of gravity in the conference.”

Auburn will be under great scrutiny in 2019. The Gus Malzahn era has been tumultuous at best. When his offense is humming and playing up to the level of Kevin Steele’s almost always good defense, Auburn is a top-10 program capable of winning the SEC and playing in a meaningful bowl game. But when it’s not, Auburn tends to find itself in a lower-tier bowl.

“Offensively, this is somewhat of a recalibration year, if you want to call it that,” Stinchcomb said. “Will we see a rushing attack more reminiscent of the dominant, top-tier Auburn football teams? I think a lot of that hinges on what they get at the quarterback position. [Joey] Gatewood and [Bo] Nix in the role that they both play in this offense. Obviously, both will have opportunities to contribute on Saturdays in some form or fashion.”

If some combination of Gatewood and Nix can give Malzahn quarterback play on-par with 2010 Cam Newton in 2010 or  2013 Nick Marshall, the Tigers could be in for a special year. Should Auburn garner quarterback play akin to 2017 Jarrett Stidham, the Tigers could be one of the better teams in the SEC. Of the two scenarios, the latter seems more likely.

With that in mind, Auburn faces one of the toughest schedules in the SEC. The Tigers begin the year with a neutral-site affair against the Pac-12 contender Oregon Ducks at AT&T Stadium in Arlington. Stinchcomb sees this as a marquee matchup, as the Ducks should have one of the best offensive lines in the country.

“They open up with Oregon,” Stinchcomb stated. “If nothing else, Auburn has, to me, one of the marquee matchups when you talk about what is thought to be one of the offensive lines, if not the best offensive line, in the country in Oregon coached by Mario Cristobal. So unsurprising, an offensive line guy versus what is thought to be the best defensive line in all of college football in Auburn in this opener. What a fantastic way to open up the season.”

While Auburn does have a tough schedule to navigate, the Tigers aren’t alone in that regard in the SEC. Georgia, the South Carolina Gamecocks and Texas A&M don’t have the easiest slates to work with either. Still, Auburn’s defensive line has “a chance for it to be a really special unit.”

Auburn has a potential top-10 2020 NFL Draft prospect in defensive tackle Derrick Brown, one of 12 SEC players nominated for the national Good Works Team. Brown may be the best talent of the bunch, but with defensive tackle Dontavius Russell, defensive end Marlon Davidson and Nick Coe coming off the edge at BUCK, there may not be a nastier defensive front in the Power 5.

Is this enough to overcome other issues on the roster? We’ll see, but being elite upfront won’t hurt in Auburn’s quest for SEC contention in 2019. Expect this unit to be the focal point of the team.

Now if we were to look on the other side of the ball, Georgia might very well be the top dogs in that department. Stinchcomb, one of the greatest offensive linemen to ever play for Georgia, seemed to be cautiously optimistic about this bunch. The Dawgs’ offensive line should be in that upper tier nationally with Oregon, but it is with good reason that he wasn’t ready to crown them just yet.

“…an offensive line guy versus what is thought to be the best defensive line in all of college football in Auburn in this opener. What a fantastic way to open up the season.”

“It’s certainly going to be a really good unit, but they’re not going to catch any passes,” Stinchcomb replied. “The best they can do is buy and afford time for the offense. The truth is that when you look at some of the fronts that Georgia will face, it doesn’t matter, you don’t even have to go out of your way to find superlatives within the conference.”

Stinchcomb rattled off the names of five elite defensive line talents on Georgia’s schedule without much effort. The Dawgs will have to go up against Auburn’s Brown, the South Carolina Gamecocks’ Javon Kinlaw, the Tennessee Volunteers’ Darrell Taylor, the Florida Gators’ Jabari Zuniga and Texas A&M’s Justin Madubuike in conference play this season.

However, Georgia does have three first-round talents on offense. Quarterback Jake Fromm, another Good Works Team nominee, could be one of the three quarterbacks taken in day one of the 2020 NFL Draft. Along with Oregon’s Justin Herbert and the Alabama Crimson Tide’s Tua Tagovailoa, Fromm could be someone’s franchise quarterback if he leaves school early a year early.

Running back D’Andre Swift is a top-20 talent. Todd Gurley, Sony Michel and Nick Chubb were all top-35 picks before him and he’s the next Georgia running back in line for that. Offensive tackle Andrew Thomas could be off the board in the top five; he’s been that good for Georgia.

So yes, Fromm and Swift should have time to run the offense behind Thomas and company this fall. But like Stinchcomb said, who’s going to catch the ball for Georgia in the passing game?

“That passing game, there’s a chance it could be better, but they have to have guys emerge, young guys emerge and some unknowns emerge early on,” Stinchcomb added. “If they don’t, this is a tough league to be one-dimensional in.”

Overall, Stinchcomb seemed a bit hesitant about giving the Georgia front-five this lofty of praise, referring back to the Dawgs’ struggles on the road against the Missouri Tigers’ defensive line only a year ago. That being said, he did end his point with this:

“I think there’s a chance this could be one of the best offensive lines this conference has seen in a long time.” Should Georgia have something close to an early Nick Saban era Alabama offensive line, watch out. Of course, Fromm still has to be an elite thrower of the football for Georgia to contend for a national title.

This dovetailed nicely into the next big topic of conversation I had with Stinchcomb on Tuesday morning. Georgia “popped” in head coach Kirby Smart’s second year as head coach in 2017, reaching the national championship game for the first time as a program since 1982.

With five SEC head coaches entering their second year with their current program, I had to ask which program is the next one to go from good to great. Stinchcomb’s response was well-thought-out and very interesting.

“I think there’s a chance this could be one of the best offensive lines this conference has seen in a long time.”

“You know, if I said Mississippi State, it’s partly because of who they have to face this year,” speculated Stinchcomb. “At this point in time, the only thing we know for sure is the schedule.”

Despite playing in the SEC West, the Mississippi State Bulldogs have a favorable slate. They get both Alabama and the LSU Tigers at home, as well as a rebuilding Kansas State Wildcats team in Starkville in the non-conference. There is a real path to 10 wins for Joe Moorhead’s bunch.

So yes, in terms of a bump up in the win/loss column, Mississippi State feels like the safe answer. Moorhead has done a great job in taking over for Dan Mullen, now entering year two as the head coach of the Florida Gators.

Stinchcomb attributes some of Moorhead’s early success at Mississippi State due to him running an offense akin to what Mullen did there previously. It has made the former Penn State Nittany Lions offensive coordinator’s assimilation to the SEC from the Big Ten look almost seamless. It has been a much smoother transition than what Bret Bielema went through after leaving the Wisconsin Badgers for the Arkansas Razorbacks over half a decade ago.

Mississippi State has a good chance to be pretty good flying under the radar this year, but what Stinchcomb had to say about Texas A&M’s future has to have Gig Em Nation fired up about the Aggies under Coach Fisher’s leadership heading into the 2020s.

“That [Texas A&M] program is the next elite program in this conference,” remarked Stinchcomb. “I think with Jimbo Fisher at the helm, it’s clear that they’ve got all four wheels on the road, not one is in the ditch anymore. The question will be how will that manifest itself?”

We agreed championships aren’t happening for the 2019 Aggies. “They have to go to Clemson in Week 2, that doesn’t help. You play in the SEC West, which certainly doesn’t help. You have to go to Athens in the next to last game of the season. You talk about a nasty bookend. So you will play three of the best teams in the country, have to. You’ll play Alabama, you’ll play Georgia and you’ll play Clemson if you’re Texas A&M. The idea that you have to do two of those three on the road, that’s a really tall task.”

Tough, but fair. Given their schedule, a 9-3 regular season for Fisher and Texas A&M would be nothing short of remarkable in 2019. But in year three of the Fisher era in College Station in 2020, that’s when the Aggies should be a real force in the SEC West.

Stinchcomb cites something like a “cultural overhaul” or maybe better yet, “a change of mindset” that Fisher has brought with him to Texas A&M after having had great success at Florida State previously. The Aggies’ never-say-die competitive attitude in the seven-overtime thriller versus division rival LSU proves his point.

“They fight, scratch and clawed their way to victory. I think that epitomizes the change, the shift in gears mentally that has occurred in College Station. I think that’s why long-term and I think in the near future that A&M is going to be the next center of gravity in the conference.”

“I think that’s why long-term and I think in the near future that A&M is going to be the next center of gravity in the conference.”

Texas A&M outlasted LSU 74-72 last November. The Aggies would go on to crush the North Carolina State Wolfpack in the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl to end their season at 9-4.

Wrapping up my conversation with Stinchcomb, I had to ask him one national college football landscape question: Is it good to have two concurrent dynasties in the Southeastern footprint in Alabama and the ACC’s Clemson Tigers meeting every year in the College Football Playoff?

Should they meet again this January in either the national semifinals or the national championship, we’ll have the fifth installment of this budding rivalry in as many seasons. Are we ready for Alabama-Clemson V?

“I think it’s good for the sport to have the two best teams playing in the championship game. If it happens to be the same two teams, those are the two teams I want to see play…So I would be okay with it being Alabama-Clemson as long as Alabama and Clemson are the two best teams.”

He has a point. People love to watch greatness, or for that matter, people like to see a giant fall. He mentioned that everybody knew that Alabama was going beat Clemson last year until the Tigers went out and beat the brakes off the Crimson Tide.

When the two best teams play, something incredible can happen. With the elevated competition and the high-stakes nature of the contest, it will certainly bring out the best players in a title bout.

Stinchcomb once again spoke to FanSided on behalf of the Allstate AFCA Good Works Team, a special team of student-athletes whose achievements off the field and in their communities are really what college athletics are all about.

"“Well, this one will be another special year, especially in this conference. There are 12 nominees for the national Good Works Team. I think it speaks to the type of kids this conference produces and continues to produce historically, more than any other conference. They’ve had 72 players named to the national team, which is the ultimate recognition when it comes to community involvement."

College football will be here before you know it. The SEC is always a vibrant part of what makes the sport so special. Will Alabama get back to the Playoff for the sixth year in a row? Can Georgia knock off the Crimson Tide should they meet again in Atlanta? What kind of years will Auburn and Mississippi State have? Is Texas A&M primed for a breakout year under Coach Fisher?

Look for all those questions to be answered and then some this fall. We’re only a few weeks out. So get ready, college football fans. The season is rapidly approaching. It’ll be here soon enough.