What a game in South Bend. It looked bad, then it looked good, then it looked good, then it looked questionable, then it looked really bad, and then it went GREAT. Which is why we love sports so much. As painful as the roller coaster can be at times, the thrill at the end is worth the anguish along the way.

I have to state the obvious before I get to anything else about the game. The additions of K.C. Concepcion and Mario Craver look like the best portal additions of anyone in the country. Without those two guys, we walk out of South Bend with our tails between our legs. We wouldn’t have been competitive without those two guys.

I was skeptical of those two guys before the season started, not because of them specifically, but because I was tired of the off-season receiver hype. Too many guys had been built up since Christian Kirk and Josh Reynolds, and all of them failed to deliver.

I’ve never been happier to be wrong about two guys than Concepcion and Craver. These guys have been amazing. Hats off to Elko and whoever else helped get them to campus.

I don’t know how many more games these guys win for us, but we’re already at one game.

We’re dead in the water without them in South Bend.

Beyond their performance, the Aggies got some breaks to go their way. I’m not saying the Aggies winning was pure luck, but in many close victories, some events prove beneficial without realizing it at the time.

Specifically, here’s what I’m talking about:

• The missed field goal at the end of the half by Bond. If we were down by 3 on the final drive, no way we go for the end zone on 4th and 11. Elko would have kicked for overtime. That miss was a huge factor in the Aggies win.
• Notre Dame scored their final touchdown with a little less than 3 minutes left. I don’t think the Aggies let them score there, but it was a big blessing. Notre Dame drives down and scores with a minute or so left, and our goose was cooked. Our inept defense actually benefitted us in that moment.
• The botched extra point by Notre Dame. Obviously.
• The holding call on our kick return. We give the ball right back to Notre Dame down by 1 with more than two minutes left, and there’s no doubt in my mind they get into field goal range.
• Using all four plays on a goal line series. Once again, not by design, but giving the ball back to Notre Dame with 13 seconds only allowed them two plays, even with their two timeouts. That wasn’t enough time for them to get in field goal range. If they had 30 seconds, they would have had a serious chance to get in field range with how our defense was playing.

I’m not going to bring up anything with the refs, but those five things aligned to force the Aggies to score a touchdown while giving us just enough time to do it and not enough time for Notre Dame to respond.

Thank goodness we didn’t have to go to overtime. I don’t know that we could have pulled out a victory with equal possessions. It could have happened, but I’m totally okay with events aligning, allowing the Aggies to have exactly one more point as regulation expired.

Notre Dame Experience:

Before I get to anything else on the game, I want to discuss the Notre Dame experience.

This is my second time going, as I went in 2000. I stayed in South Bend this time, so my experience was slightly different. I enjoyed spending the whole weekend in South Bend, instead of commuting in from Chicago.

It’s a great place to spend a college football weekend.

I know people get annoyed by all of the attention Notre Dame gets. I’m one of them. They definitely get the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the perception of how good their team is and how good they actually are.

Their schedule is usually pretty weak compared to the rest of the SEC or Big 10 schools. It’s frustrating to see them get propped up when they’re playing Navy, Stanford, Boston College, Purdue, and other teams of the same caliber.

However, their gameday experience is pretty awesome.

The history, pageantry, and everything else are as good as it gets in college football.

It’s not as rowdy as other schools, but it’s a great scene. It doesn’t need to be rowdy because it’s reverent. They’ve been relevant in college football longer than any other program. Sure, some have had more success and there have been periods where Notre Dame wasn’t good; but they’ve always been relevant in college football history.

There’s something to be said for that.

If you’ve never been to a game there and you get the chance, go. It’s even better if it’s a marquee matchup.

Let’s talk about the game.

Coaching:

I came into this game feeling that we had to press the gas on offense to win.

We did precisely that.

I felt we would lose if we tried to get into a war of the trenches. Elko and Klein had a great game plan for winning this thing, and they executed it pretty well.

I’m still a little worried about this team as a whole, but I have to give Elko and Klein credit. They had the right game plan for Notre Dame.

It’s clear Concepcion and Craver are the two biggest weapons on this entire team. They need to be fed and fed often if we stand the chance of winning football games.

I felt Klein kind of lost his way in the second half after Reed missed Concepcion and Niblack for what likely would have been touchdowns. We went to a two-back set for a good portion of the second half, and it seemed like we couldn’t quite get anything going.

It seemed like Klein got a little more conservative since Reed missed on those deep balls.

Our third-down calls were especially baffling all evening. We only converted 4 of 11 third downs. I couldn’t quite tell what was going on, but we really didn’t have guys open. Reed missed a couple of guys on plays, but for the most part, the plays didn’t develop enough to convert the third down.

In addition, the call to Reed to run to the short side on 1st and goal from the 10 on our final series was mind-boggling. I don’t like Reid running to the short side. He’s not a super elusive runner, and he’s certainly not powerful. Reid is plenty athletic and can be elusive, but he’s not a guy who’s going to juke an entire defense out of their jocks.

Reed needs as much space as possible to spread guys out.

My only complaints about Klein are the third downs and the call on the first and goal on the final drive, so he did just fine.

The overall game plan of trying to outscore the opponent worked. If this team is to keep winning, the offense has to keep scoring points. Our defense just doesn’t have the horses to dominate the opponent.

I have to assume Elko knows this, and the reason for the game plan against Notre Dame.

There’s some stuff to improve on, but I am glad this staff seems more grounded in the reality of what is and isn’t possible with their roster.

Offense:

Receivers:

I’ve already talked about them, but I’m going to reiterate how good Concepcion and Craver are.

They are the difference in this football team’s being 3-0 instead of 2-1. There is no way around it. If they don’t transfer in, this is a completely different team.

We had 360 yards of passing, and they had 289 of those yards, which is 80% of our passing yards.

Craver averaged 29.6 yards a catch on 7 receptions, and Concepcion averaged 20.5 yards a catch on 4 receptions. That average would have been much higher if he had caught that ball on the first series and if Reed had been able to hit him for what would have been a 99-yard touchdown. He would have had another 150 yards or so.

Concepcion would have averaged close to 40 yards a catch if those two completions had happened.

These guys are just incredible. That’s a tough Notre Dame secondary they did that against. I’ll be curious how defenses defend these guys going forward, as it’ll undoubtedly be a focus.

If I have a complaint about the receiving game, it’s that we never tried a bubble screen to Craver. It was a pretty big staple in the first two games, but we never tried it. Maybe they thought the Notre Dame secondary was too good, but I did want it tried at least once to see if he could have busted it open.

This unit absolutely carried the Aggies to victory.

Running Backs:

Although the running game seemed a bit underwhelming, I thought it was the perfect complement to what we were doing through the air.

Le’Veon Moss had a “quiet” night, rushing 20 times for 81 yards and 3 scores.

Moss saw most of the snaps in the evening. I don’t know if there’s anything to glean from Moss taking most of the snaps. I believe Moss is our best back and can handle the amount of carries he got, so there’s no reason to overthink it.

I like it.

Rueben Owens had 3 carries for 5 yards, and Amari Daniels had 1 carry for 4 yards.

I saw Jamarrion Morrow out there a couple of times and E.J. Smith on the final drive of the first half, along with another third down.

We ran a lot of 2 back sets in the second half, motioning in and out of them, but they didn’t seem to do much. I believe Bussey was one of the guys motioning in and out. I was in the second-to-last row of the stadium, so I couldn’t always make out who was doing what.

I assume Klein just wanted the run game to complement the passing game, so I’ll take it.

Offensive Line:

I think the offensive line is decent enough. They’re a little inconsistent in my mind.

They will look good at times, and then they’ll blow assignments. I get that happens, but this unit still has a long way to go to truly be great.

It looked like they were still rotating guys, which puzzled me a bit. I thought they would have the five guys figured out and be willing to roll with them.

Two things really stood out to me in this game.

First, we were unable to run to the left side. We tried three or four times with Moss, but he got nowhere.

The other thing that stood out to me is Chase Bisontis’s inconsistency. I know he’s the guy that some people think could have held on the final play, but I don’t care about that. Throughout the game, he struggled at times. He’s not terrible by any stretch, as he’ll dominate at times, but I think he’s the most inconsistent lineman by far.

We had way too many false starts, which need to be cleaned up.

I think this unit did pretty well against the pass rush, as Notre Dame was trying to bring a lot of pressure. Reed helped this group a ton as he moved through the pocket, but credit to the offensive line for giving him space to move to.

Reed wasn’t sacked once all night, which is a credit to this unit, especially considering Reed threw the ball 37 times.

My hope for this unit is that they get the best five guys figured out and roll forward with them.

I want this to be the 2020 offensive line, and they still have a way to go.

Quarterback:

This statement will sound weird – Marcel Reed didn’t play a great game.

He didn’t.

He played a pretty good game which allowed his team to win but he was far from great.

Which I think is a testament to the players around him and the fact this offense can get even better if Reed can continue to improve.

He had an awful interception and missed Concepcion and Nilback on what would have been touchdowns. At the same time, he made some money throws that were significant factors in the game.

I have no problem with his game at the moment, but just pointing out he can get even better.

One thing I continue to see with Reed is that he’s not a dominant runner. He’s got some elusiveness, but he’s not a burner, and he certainly can’t run through defenders.

He can certainly extend the play, but I don’t think we’ll see him routinely have big running plays like we’ve seen from other dual-threat quarterbacks. You know who I’m talking about…

Reed is wonderful at moving in the pocket, though. His greatest attribute is his ability to move into space and reset.

I’m good with that as long as Reed can stay where he is.

If he dials it up a notch, even better.

Defense:

Overall:

The Aggie defense struggled quite a bit on Saturday night.

My biggest fear came true—this is not a super talented defense. My biggest point in proving this is that there’s very little NFL talent on the defensive side of the ball. Some of the young guys can certainly develop into NFL players, but when it comes to our guys logging the most minutes right now, I don’t see a lot of high NFL draft picks.

I just don’t.

I think we’re going to see a lot more games like this. We just have to hold on, hoping our offense can make one more play than our defense will give up.

I’m curious to see how Elko handles this, as I think he’s pretty aware of the issues facing this defense.

Defensive Line:

The most exciting thing about this game from a defensive standpoint was the play of our defensive tackles. We already know what Albert Regis can do, but D.J. Hicks had the best game of his career and was flat out disruptive at times.

We also had a good rotation of guys who held up inside most of the night. Tyler Onyedim did a wonderful job rotating in with Hicks and Regis.

Notre Dame struggled to run between the tackles, which is a testament to the interior of our defensive line.

I’m pretty pleased with this group.

I didn’t see much from our defensive ends. Cashius Howell was disruptive on a couple of plays, but for the most part, our defensive ends were pretty quiet all night. They seemed to get taken out of plays where they couldn’t seal the edge.

I have a feeling we’ll see a lot more teams test the edge of our defensive line to see if they can find running space.

I’m not totally sure what the best solution is, but it could pose a problem in the SEC. I kind of think we need to run some of the big young defensive ends out there, like Marco Jones.

Linebackers:

This is the unit that perplexes me a bit.

Scooby Williams missed the second half of the game, but something is becoming more obvious about him. He’s really good at playing with his eyes forward, but he’s not so good at playing going backward.

If the play is in front of him, he can ball. If the play is going behind him, he struggles. He’s not been good in pass coverage in the two seasons at A&M.

I’m pretty sure he blew the coverage on the Jeremiyah Love touchdown reception, where Love just ran a standard wheel route and nobody covered him. That’s usually the assignment of a linebacker, and I believe it was Scooby’s.

I could be wrong, but it seems like it should have been Scooby’s guy.

Scooby made some great plays in the backfield, but he’s got to be a net positive overall.

Daymion Sanford filled in for Scooby and had a fantastic night. He had a big sack at the end of the first half and then had a solo tackle taking down Love on a 4th and 1 play to turn the ball over on downs.

Sanford was far and away our best linebacker of the night.

Now comes the tough part – I think Taurean York is regressing.

He struggled quite a bit on Saturday night and didn’t do much. At least not for a middle linebacker.

He was out of position for a good portion of the night and just didn’t do much. On one specific play on third down, we called a stunt where he was supposed to fill the gap left by Albert Regis. York was slow in getting there, and the Notre Dame lineman made him irrelevant on the play as Notre Dame picked up the first down.

I’ve never considered York an NFL player due to his lack of size, but I do expect more from him in his third year in the Aggie program.

I’m not sure what Elko and Bateman need to do here other than play Sanford more.

Obviously, Scooby’s health is also a factor.

Secondary:

If you had told me we would have only given up 136 yards of rushing, but Notre Dame scored 34 points on offense, I would have been surprised.

I would have thought Notre Dame would have pounded the ball on the ground to get 34 points on offense.

The Aggie secondary had far and away the roughest night of any position group against Notre Dame. Notre Dame has some decent receiving threats, but they shouldn’t have been able to rack up 291 yards through the air.

One guy showed out, and it’s the guy I’ve been critical of from last year’s team – Dezz Ricks. He was far and away our best defender in the secondary on Saturday night. I have to give him credit.

Everyone else looked like a Keystone Cop trying to defend a Notre Dame receiver. In addition to covering, they also struggled with tackling.

Will Lee needs to lose his nickname for a bit, at least publicly. If he needs it to hype himself up, then go for it. His blanket had a few holes in it on Saturday night, especially on third downs. I don’t know if he was playing zone, but there were several times the receiver would stop right past the line of gain on third down, and Will Lee would be three or four yards off of him for an easy third-down conversion.

Notre Dame was 7/15 for third-down conversions on Saturday night. Four plays were where a Notre Dame receiver went right past the stick and turned around while there was no Aggie defender within a couple of yards of him.

Getting off the field on third down has been a staple for Mike Elko. It wasn’t on Saturday night in South Bend.

I don’t know what to do with this unit, as it’s going to be absolutely tested by SEC offenses. If that happens, it will be the reason we don’t get to Atlanta.

I know Bryce Anderson got hurt. It looks like he’s going to be okay. I don’t know about his football future, and that’s not a concern for me. I’m just happy it looks like he’ll be just fine from a physical standpoint.

I think he just had his bell rung really badly and will need some time to recover.

Special Teams:

What was a strength under Elko all of last season was a liability on Saturday night. It all worked out, but this could have been a much easier win if special teams had done a few things better.

Looking Forward:

This is hard to say, but I feel like the Aggies have 2-3 losses this season. This defense is just too bad. If we go up against a defense that can slow us down or, even worse, stop us, we’ll wind up on the short side of things.

8-4 is definitely our floor right now. I feel pretty confident in saying that. That’s not what I want or expect, but I think it’s our floor right now.

Despite the rankings, the SEC is an absolute grinder right now. There’s not a gimme win on our schedule the rest of the way, including Mississippi State. We come out flat for a game, and whoever we play will bite us.

I still feel like LSU is a loss. Their offense hasn’t found its footing, but their defense seems to have improved dramatically from last season.

I feel much better about the Texas game, but it’s going to be a wild game. One team has a stout defense and a struggling offense; the other has a struggling defense and a stout offense.

It wouldn’t shock me if we lost to Auburn coming off that Notre Dame win, as Auburn torches our secondary. I don’t think it happens, but it could.

Florida seems to be down, but they could get better as the season wears on, just like they did last year.

The road games at Arkansas and Missouri won’t be easy. Arkansas is going to get someone, and it could be us.

Who knows what the Gamecocks will look like when they roll into Kyle in November?

I’m not even going to wager a guess on what our final record will look like.

I would be ecstatic if we somehow managed to pull off a 4-1 record in the next five games against Auburn, Mississippi State, Florida, Arkansas, and LSU.

That would put us at 7-1 and well-positioned for Atlanta and the playoffs.

It’s entirely possible, but we’ve got a lot of things to work on. We won’t always get things to break our way like they did on Saturday night.

Enjoy the off week and then let’s BTHO Auburn.

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