TexasAggie

I am in a bit of a rush at the moment so I can't write anything extensive myself, but here's a link to a report written by a former A&M LB who played for us in the early 90s. It's a bit long and his writing isn't Dickens quality, but it will give you an idea how our spring practices & game went and where our program is. http://texags.com/main/forum.reply.asp?topic_id=1612902&forum_id=5 Super short cliff notes Defense: We look faster and more confident and a few of our underclassmen who were lost last year, snap after snap, look poised to emerge as defensive playmakers now that the college game has slowed down for them. Also, a lot of our true freshman appear vastly improved after a few months in the strength and conditioning program. Here's hoping it will make them surer tacklers next year. Offense: our skill players still look great. The OL is meh, but a lot of people missed spring workouts with injuries, so it's hard to draw any definitive conclusions. Here's a tidbit that should leave yall chuckling: we have an early enrollee (read: a friggin high school senior) at Left Tackle who was given the starting spot and never relinquished it. Granted, he is highly talented and was a big time recruit according to scout, rivals, espn, and all the other services but still. LT is a hard position! Thankfully we have a few cream puffs to start the season before the schedule gets tough.

The guy's a tribute to your university. Staying for his senior year, getting his degree, and then turning around and giving his dept a fat check for an endowed scholarship... Great stuff. You don't see much of that in today's "me" era. Plus, on the field he was a blast to watch. As an Aggie, I greatly enjoyed watching him toss Colt around like a rag doll. I'm also really glad we won't have to face him next year. He literally would have defeated us single handedly in 09 (our oline wasn't very good).

Oops double post

I'm going to bring a bit of a different perspective as I'm a Texas Aggie. This is also gonna start with a bit of a tangent but I promise it's relevant. So far, our coach Mike Sherman seems to be almost a miracle worker on the offensive side of the ball. Our quarterback, who absolutely lit Texas up a few weeks ago, actually played TE in high school and then ran the option for two years under our previous coach Dennis Franchione. This year, in his second season under Sherman, he threw for 3200 yards (school record), 26TDs (school record), and only 6 Ints, 3 of which were in 1 terrible game during which nobody could do anything right. Our WRs have been equally impressive. A&M has always more or less been representing the big 10 in the deep south; in other words, 3 yards and a cloud of dust. We have never had a 1000 yard receiver in our school's history. Prior to Jerrod Johnson our qb, our school passing record for a single season was ~2700 yards, including the bowl. So when Sherman produces a go-to tru fish (Uzoma Nwachukwu), a true sophomore (Jeff Fuller), and a redshirt sophomore (Ryan Tannehill, who was playing qb when Sherman arrived), he deserves a lot of credit. My point with this is to back up the assertion that Sherman is a great evaluator and developer of offensive talent. He has brought in a lot of recruits that have stepped onto campus and contributed as true freshman. And let me tell you, he really, really wanted Cody Green. We sent the house after him but he ended up with the the Corn; a fact that disappointed a lot of Aggies. He raved about his ability to make all the throws, his decision making (he had 36TDs and 5 Ints his senior year), etc. In Sherman's mind, Cody Green was the real deal. Anyway, it's my opinion that you all should consider the fact that the kid is a true freshman and that he can still improve dramatically. Quarterback is, without a doubt, about the hardest position to pick up because there is so much to learn, memorize, and train into muscle memory. Then all the reading defense stuff. It's really darn hard and takes a lot of time to learn. For example, earlier in the post I mentioned our quarterback, Jerrod Johnson. Not to brag, but the kid looked absolutely amazing against Texas, who was the #1 rated overall defense before JJ carved 'em up. Well, at the beginning of this season, Sherman had so much confidence in JJ that he declared the QB race up for grabs, and JJ barely beat out Ryan Tennehill. Yeah. Last year (as our starter) JJ went 4-11 against Texas for 62 yards (long of 33 yards so half of 'em came on one play) and 1 TD. It was so bad that he got benched. Only one year later, he went 26-32 for 342 yards, 4TDs, and 1 Int. That's quite a difference!!! Anyway, it's tough now, especially after an ugly 1 point loss, but don't give up on a true fish just because he didn't look good this year. Our team is loaded with offensive talent, but I still look at Cody Green as one that got away (as do many other aggies)!!

Isn't that the truth. When we played Texas (A&M fan here), they held Von Miller (who is the national sack leader with 17) all freaking night without a call. Drove me crazy. Unfortunately as you said, it seems to be a problem with the entire big 12. Everybody holds without getting calls. It actually shot Texas Tech in the foot last year. They got to their bowl game, the refs started calling holds, & it threw their whole game off.

Your defense truly played inspired football. SUH is a freak of nature. I've never seen a defensive player influence a game as much as he did. We have a single playmaker in on D named Von Miller who is an absolute terror (he is leading the NCAA with 17 sacks right now) but even he has never put together the combination of pass rush and brick wall rushing defense that SUH did. And hats off to the rest of the defense as well. They manned up on the Texas guys all game long, didn't miss tackles, and probably ensured that Colt doesn't win the Heisman. Literally, in all my years of watching football, I've never seen a defense play so darn hard. The fact that they did it for 59:58 minutes (the horse collar tackle was really their only flub all game) was insane, especially given that they got almost 0 help from the offense. On that note, we sure know the feeling, though it was 360 for us. Walking out of the stadium after a 49-39 loss, pretty much everybody was saying "Dammit if we could just field a top 60 defense and make our tackles after contact, we would have won this game running away." And for you guys it was "Dammit if we could just field a halfway decent offense, we would have won this running away." It's frustrating as anything to see an awesome effort by one squad end up for naught because the other unit couldn't do jack. Regardless, Pelini seems to be doing a pretty good job. Yall are 9-4 with a very decent shot at a double digit win season and that's not too bad for a 2nd year coach who was hired to do a good bit of rebuilding on his way to restoring the program to glory. It doesn't make the losses hurt any less, especially ones like this in which you had them on the ropes, but as an outsider looking at it without any bias, yall are doing pretty well under Pelini (but it does appear that you need another offensive coordinator). Best of luck in your bowl game. I'll sure as heck be watching.

Agreed, but we do have twice the defense which could keep us in the game. Hah you have more than that. For real. You guys are giving up 10.27pts/game while we are giving up 32.6. Beating Texas starts with good tackling. Bad tackling probably gave them 14 or 21 points last night and an extra 200 yards. Thankfully, you all don't appear to have that problem whereas we've struggled to tackle all season long. While not exclusively so, their offense's main goal is to get the ball into the hands of their athletic receivers in open space (lots of times this is behind the LOS) or when they have one on one matchups. It's then up to them to beat their guys and get yards. But, if your defense can handle the one on one matchups, they'll really struggle to move the ball. Concerning yall's offense: I've watched Nebraska play some this year and there's no doubt that it needs work, but I think Cody Green is the answer. There were a lot of disappointed A&M fans when he committed to the Huskers because he's a stud. Big, mobile, accurate, and he has a cannon for an arm. It make take another season for him to learn the ropes (he's a true fish right?) but I predict that he'll be starting and a hug playmaker by his junior season; the kind that opens everything up just by being out there.

The Ags gave it their best shot against the whorns, but in the end, we couldn't overcome the deficiencies on defense; we just had too many freshman and walkons. Which is too bad. An offense should never have to taste defeat when they score 39 points at home, convert over half their 3rd downs, and roll up over 500 yards of offense. Yup, our offense played their best game of the season and absolutely abused their whatever ranked defense for 60 straight minutes. I swear, if our defense was half as good as yalls, I think Texas would be rolling into the B12CG 11-1 rather than 12-0. You can sure as heck bet that we were all wishing that as we watched Texas receivers shake off tackles and then make huge runs after first contact. But alas, it was not to be and now the ball's in your court. It would make all of us down here in College Station really happy if you could derail their title hopes. Their arrogance is absolutely insufferable and listening to them come up with excuse after excuse would be great. Anyway, I hope you all crush the tsippers and good luck against Colorado as well (can't stand those guys. They might be even worse fans than the tech tards).