Texas A&M is not a bad football team. However, when you get this deep into the season desperate teams can work hard to ascertain your weaknesses, analyze them, and figure out a way to exploit them.

Title/Alt Text

Saturday afternoon, you saw a Arkansas team fighting to make a bowl game pull out a stunning overtime victory on the road over an Ole Miss team that had more incentive to win and should have been better across the board. It just speaks to how motivated coaching staffs can be when jobs are on the line because a team is perceived to have underperformed and how players feed off of that energy from the top down.

Saturday night you saw the same thing happen with A&M and Auburn. Auburn had to have that win in College Station or else they were not going to make a bowl game which is quite a fall for a program that was rated in the top five before the season and had made the publicized staff hire in the country in defensive coordinator Will Muschamp. The Tigers found a way to get the most out of a turnover prone quarterback in Jeremy Johnson, a guy who had been benched after a disastrous start to the season. They exploited A&M’s below par fundamentals versus the run to rush for a season high 311 yards. They also took Kyler Murray’s legs out of the game and reduced him to a freshman passer operating a restricted passing game.

In addition, it’s a reminder that the SEC is like the NFL in that any team can compete with any other team on any given Saturday because most teams have enough talent to win games if things break right for them. Auburn finally has a healthy Carl Lawson who does the same things for them at defensive end that Myles Garrett does for the Aggies in terms of generating a pass rush. In addition, Jovon Robinson is a big, athletic runner who helped the Tigers pound A&M between the tackles.

Now, the Aggies are in the same boat as the Tigers and Razorbacks, not necessarily in terms of making a bowl game (they’re already bowl eligible) but in terms of expectations for the season. Again, A&M ramped up those expectations with a 5-0 start to the season and a top ten ranking and then turnovers and an inability to stop the run doomed them in losses to Alabama and Ole Miss. There’s no shame in losing to ranked teams and the Ole Miss game was a young team’s first true road contest of the year. It happens.

After changing out quarterbacks due to injury or ineffectiveness or both (take your pick), A&M seemingly righted the ship last week against South Carolina but then those two problems reared up again Saturday night in the loss to Auburn as A&M played its worst game of the season.

Not only that, there are two basic rules for head coaches: don’t get blown out (embarrassing) and don’t lose at home in front of the major donors who give a lot of money as well as a fan base that invests significant time and money to watch them play. In terms of losing home games, A&M has won two home games in SEC play since November 2013. In addition, three of the losses were by more than one score.

So where does A&M go from here?

On a long term basis…..staff changes came down last season after the Aggies started off 5-0 and then proceeded to lose five of their last seven regular season games. You’re probably looking at something similar this season and most of the time teams that don’t close strong usually make a coordinator change. Defensive coordinator Mark Snyder eventually lost his job last season but A&M also had two other coaches leave or get terminated. In addition, a big name replacement was demanded on the defensive side of the ball and A&M head coach Kevin Sumlin pulled off a coup in nabbing highly-regarded defensive coordinator John Chavis from LSU. The Aggies are playing much better on defense this season although they’ve tailed off in recent weeks.

In the short term, the blame for the downturn in recent weeks goes to the offensive side of the ball. Offensive coordinator Jake Spavital’s offense has struggled some all season and it’s done so despite having two five star quarterbacks (both of them underclassmen) and multiple five star receivers. In addition, they’ve got big running backs and four upperclassmen in the offensive line. Even so, the Aggies have scored just two touchdowns on offense in three of their last four games and have turned it over nine times in those contests.

We’ve been told that Spavital will not be back and the tenures of others on the staff will depend on how A&M finishes up both the season on the field and recruiting. The newcomers to the staff over the past couple of years as well as special teams coordinator Jeff Banks are probably the safest. That’s because people have seen improvement the physical play of the receiving corps as well as the coverage and tackling among the defensive backs. The defensive ends have been a strong point and Banks’ special teams have been among the best in the SEC this season.

In the short term, A&M faces more uncertainty at quarterback after Murray’s performance the other night. The position will probably be thrown open again, especially as sophomore Kyle Allen is much closer to being 100% than he was a few weeks ago and it’s Murray who is now injured.

Regardless of who the quarterback is, A&M’s offense made adjustments after the Ole Miss loss by using more zone blocking and Murray’s legs to stretch South Carolina’s defense horizontally to open up the interior running game and play action passing. Auburn used its defensive ends to contain Murray and also moved its backers outside the tackles. While that allowed A&M to run the ball to the inside they couldn’t establish Murray on the option.

In addition, Auburn was ready for A&M’s route combinations. For example, A&M ran a pattern down on the goal line that resulted in an interception that was the same pattern that they threw for a touchdown the week before against South Carolina and is a basic Air Raid staple. A linebacker didn’t go with the inside receiver when he went outside and just sat on the post to the outside receiver. The same thing occurred on a Johnny Manziel interception versus Sam Houston in 2013…the same calls in the red zone over multi year period.

Because of the turnovers and health issues, you could see all three quarterbacks this weekend against Western Carolina or you could see just one. A lot of it depends on how healthy Murray and Allen are.

In addition, slot receiver Christian Kirk has been dinged up as well and teams have also schemed to take his big play ability out of A&M’s offense. Thus, for all of the talent in A&M’s offense, where do the explosive plays come from? Early on, they came from Kirk’s legs. Against South Carolina, Murray either generated them or was such a threat that he opened up the field for others. Outside of Josh Reynolds and Speedy Noil, who both go up and get the ball, A&M really doesn’t have anyone to generate explosive plays, especially unscripted ones. A&M had one long play over 20 yards versus Ole Miss and just two against Auburn.

It also doesn’t help that when A&M has made changes this season that they lose patience if those things start to slow down and revert back to things that don’t work, particularly those rollouts and bootlegs where they pull a lineman or H back. Those players lack the mobility and coordination to make those blocks on the perimeter which means that quarterbacks come under duress and turn the ball over.

A&M gets little push in the running game or misses blocks on a consistent basis. Running back Tra Carson is playing the best ball of his career. He’s running hard and his pass protection is very good. He’s even doing the best he can going outside even though he’s between the tackles runner. Even so, A&M had a second and one near the end of the first half the other night, ran three straight plays, and didn’t gain a yard. They missed multiple blocks in the process on the three plays and even couldn’t make the first down when they had Auburn outnumbered in the box and used a H back and running back to block for the quarterback.

Defensively, A&M has had issues against the run all season but for some reason they really weren’t noticed until the South Carolina game at home. The Aggies have been giving up almost 250 yards a game since the Arizona State game and it was always blamed on something that they hadn’t seen before or the linebackers (which have been a convenient scapegoat all season).

Unfortunately, when you give 311 yards rushing, it finally seemed to hit home with people that the lack of defense has been a team effort. A&M used six people in the box less than ever the other night versus Auburn but it didn’t matter. Their containment, run fits, and punch have been lacking all season as a group, not just at the second level of the defense. In addition, A&M’s opponents are all using different means to run the ball (Alabama’s power rushing, South Carolina’s quarterback run game, and Auburn’s wing T principles out of the spread) and continue to pile up their best or second best efforts of the season running the ball. That doesn’t happen if you are doing what you need to do.

As a result, A&M’s safeties have been called upon to make tackle after tackle and it culminated in a 39-tackle effort at the Ole Miss game between Armani Watts, Justin Evans and nickel Donovan Wilson. Not only do they rank as the leading, second leading, and fourth ranked tacklers on the team but Watts is the only defensive back in the top 15 tacklers in the SEC. In fact, Watts had 20 tackles by himself versus Ole Miss. Thus, is it any coincidence that Watts finally had a subpar outing tackling against South Carolina (when the Aggies gave up more big plays than usual), Wilson and Evans had similar issues against Auburn, and Watts got dinged versus the Tigers?

I’ve made this point over the years but safeties aren’t built to come downhill 20 times a game, especially in the SEC. They tend to break down and A&M’s safeties have historically broken down after their junior seasons when they’ve started for three years and led the team in tackles. In fact, when A&M can’t get a lead (Alabama, Ole Miss, and Auburn), other teams don’t have to throw the ball and just keep running it. Thus, the best part of A&M’s defense….its pass rush and secondary…are taken out of the equation. As a result, A&M is now ranked tenth in scoring and total defense and last in rushing defense in the SEC. They’re giving up just three points less per game this season than last season versus a schedule that’s far less difficult. You may want to deduct the pick sixes from the Alabama game or take into account the turnovers in recent games but A&M had an interception and fumble returned for touchdowns last season versus Ole Miss and also had a multiple game stretch of turnovers that negatively impacted the unit.

Finally, A&M played with great energy against Arizona State in the opener and were by far the more physical team even though they didn’t play error free football. They’ve lacked that energy ever since although they have been physical at times and the defense finds ways to get stops to win games. Murray seemed to reenergize them in the South Carolina game but nothing seems to deflate a team worse than turnovers in the red zone going in or coming out from their own end of the field and the Aggies never recovered from those early picks against both Alabama and Auburn.

Overall, this has been a transition season in which A&M’s schedule has masked some of its deficiencies as a program. Don’t get me wrong….this team has enough talent to defeat anyone in the SEC…but they are still young, mistake prone, and have significant issues stopping the run. They can still run the table even though Vanderbilt looks more daunting after the Florida game Saturday and LSU may be playing at home with a playoff spot on the line. However, they’ve got to protect the football, find ways to stop the run, and play with a higher energy level like Auburn and Arkansas did Saturday and they themselves did last year at Auburn.

Longer term, there are probably changes coming. If you’re looking for a name at offensive coordinator, keep current UCLA coordinator Noel Mazzone in mind. Mazzone has run one back clinics with Sumlin. His name has come up in the past. He’s in the last year of a contract paying him only about $645,000 annually. At UCLA, he’s worked with a run/pass signal caller in Brett Hundley in what was primarily an option attack with two back sets and freshman drop back passer Josh Rosen this season in a one back offense. It’s early and other names may come up depending on whatever coaching changes occur between now and the signing day but Mazzone is probably someone to keep an eye out for right now.