Texas A&M remained unbeaten on Saturday, but they got there in just about the most terrifying way imaginable if you're an Aggies fan. Mike Elko's team played about as ugly a first half as you'll ever see against South Carolina, turning the ball over three times, dropping several passes, missing a chip-shot field goal and giving up not one but two long touchdowns to a previously dormant Gamecock offense. The score was 30-3 at the break, and Kyle Field was in shock.
Luckily, Marcel Reed and Co. came out to start the third quarter with their hair on fire, ripping off four unanswered touchdowns on four straight drives to turn that 27-point deficit into a one-point lead. 10-0 is 10-0, and this time of year a win is a win. The Aggies remain in control of their own destiny for a spot in the SEC title game and a top-four seed (and first-round bye) in the College Football Playoff.
And yet ... well, we'd probably advise A&M fans not to exhale too much. Sure, the explosive passing game and hellacious pass rush eventually showed up, and this remains a dangerous team. But this weekend also exposed some cracks in the foundation, ones that had flown under the radar due to a lack of real stress tests. Those stress tests are coming soon, and Saturday hardly inspired confidence.
Texas A&M's shiny record has been built on a tissue-soft schedule
Let's call a spade a spade here: A&M has been coasting on SEC branding for much of this season. Yes, it's still the best conference in the country, but the reality of these new mega-conferences and unbalanced schedules is that all paths are very much not created equal.
Just look at A&M's conference slate to this point. Their seven league wins to date have become against Auburn, Mississippi State, Florida, Arkansas, LSU, Missouri (with a backup freshman at quarterback) and South Carolina. For those keeping score at home, those are seven of the eight teams currently comprising the bottom half of the league — all that's missing is Kentucky.
You can talk up Auburn or Florida or Mississippi State as plucky underdogs all you want, and to a certain extent I guess that's true. But all of those teams are trending toward missing a bowl game for a reason: They're simply not very good. Sure, they might have solid individual units, but they're very far from the sort of complete team that has the ability to exploit whatever flaws the Aggies might have.
South Carolina scare exposed flaws that could cost the Aggies in SEC title game, College Football Playoff
Really, the entirety of A&M's resume is resting on that one-point win at Notre Dame back in Week 3. But even that win, while no doubt impressive, involved allowing 429 total yards and six yards per play — and required both a botched snap on an extra point and a highly controversial missed holding call on fourth down. It was hardly a declarative statement; Miami looked far more impressive in their early win over the Irish, and it also happened to come in just the third start of CJ Carr's career.
While Mike Elko's defense gets after teams as ferociously as any in the country, that aggression can sometimes come at the expense of big plays. That nearly doomed them against the Irish, and it popped back up against South Carolina on Saturday in the form of two pass plays of 50+ yards. Now imagine what might happen when this team has to face a viable passing game, whether Alabama's or Georgia's or in the College Football Playoff?
Which brings us to Reed, who's been one of the best stories in the country this year amid a season that might land him in New York as a Heisman Trophy finalist. For as good as he's been, though, he's still far from a polished passer in the pocket. His receivers didn't do him many favors, but he also airmailed throws consistently in the first half, the sort of inaccuracy that's plagued him throughout his career.
This may sound like picking nits, and I guess it is. But the tuneup is officially over; the Aggies head to Austin for a showdown with Texas next weekend, and after that it's a potential trip to Atlanta and then the Playoff begins. They've been playing with a decent margin for error so far, but it's about to evaporate, and the glitches that haven't loomed large yet suddenly will.