The Texas A&M Aggies will do something this weekend they haven’t done at any previous point in 2015, or at any point in time since Nov. 8, 2014, roughly 50 weeks ago: Play a regular-season game outside the state of Texas.
That’s pretty wild, right? Texas A&M played the last two games of its 2014 SEC regular season at home, meaning that its final out-of-state road date was at Auburn on 11-8-2014. This season, the annual neutral-site showdown with Arkansas — in Arlington, Texas — marked the Aggies’ first SEC game at a place other than Kyle Field.
Only now will we get to see the Aggies play in truly hostile territory. Accordingly, only now will we see how Kyle Allen responds to difficult environments… and how the A&M coaching staff adjusts to the challenge of trying to extract turnover-free performances from an erratic signal caller.
A&M is truly a mystery team. The Aggies seemed to be in for a big year when they smothered Arizona State’s offense in week one, but week-one games have a way of misleading us. (Stanford-Northwestern, step right up and claim your prize at the door.) Arizona State’s offense has struggled to find form and functionality this season, so A&M’s display against the Sun Devils — as legitimately impressive as it was and still is — must be seen in an accordingly different light. Had Arizona State’s offense roared into gear and stayed there, we’d be talking about A&M’s defense in far more reverential tones.
Texas A&M is truly a season shaper because — after its loss to Alabama last Saturday — it is not in control of its fate in the SEC West. Should the Aggies beat Ole Miss this Saturday, in what is a supremely fascinating week-eight matchup, the winner of the LSU-Alabama game would call the shots in the division. A&M therefore fits the mold of a season shaper: It is not at the top of the food chain, but it neatly falls into that “three through six” realm in a conference. The Aggies are the “just-below-the-top-tier” team which always determines whether a conference possesses or lacks depth. A&M will show us if the SEC — in the West division, but also as a whole conference — has quality depth or diminished depth in 2015.
It has been said elsewhere, but it bears repeating: On Saturday, A&M stepped into Alabama’s shoes. The Aggies, playing at home, gave the ball away time and time again to their opponent, which was able to translate those takeaways directly into touchdowns and win despite a less-than-complete performance from its offense. This was the very role played by Bama in its home-field loss to Ole Miss a few weeks earlier. The extent to which A&M and Alabama exchanged identities was almost eerie, and quite unmistakable. The strong similarities between Alabama-A&M and Ole Miss-Alabama underscore the extent to which the SEC West is an unsettled land full of questions, doubts, and quiet worry heading into the second half of the season.
None of these four teams — Bama, LSU, A&M, and Ole Miss — look like world-beaters at the moment. That said, the LSU-Bama winner is likely the critics’ choice to win the division. The winner of A&M-Ole Miss this weekend will certainly have a say in how this race is ultimately decided.
Beyond those matters, however, we need to repeat the bigger question. It’s not just a matter of who wins and loses in the SEC West. How will these four teams perform in the latter half of the season? Is this going to be a division that is lost by the losers more than it is won by the winners? Will Bama, LSU, A&M, and Ole Miss trip over themselves, with the winner being the team which stumbles the fewest times and staggers to the finish line first… only because the other three hurdlers are all still on the ground after failing to clear the obstacles in their path? Or, will one of these teams (maybe two) begin to play at an exalted height, showing its best side on a regular basis and becoming the team its coaching staff hoped it would be when the season began?
Texas A&M is not all that unique in comparison to its foremost competitors; Ole Miss, Alabama, and LSU all face comparably difficult challenges in the weeks ahead. However, as the one team yet to play a true road game in the 2015 SEC, the Aggies do deserve to be seen as the main season shaper in a cutthroat conference which is struggling to find its best form yet again.
