Texas A&M Football: Regular season final report card and position grades

Going into 2017 and outside of the secondary, the running back position was the group the staff felt the most confident about.  Returning from the 2016 team was 1,000 yard rusher Trayveon Williams and Keith Ford.  Kendall Bussey and Kwame Etwi also return plus the team added 2017 signee Jacob Kibodi.

After the UCLA game you had to feel the running game would not be a concern, but I’ll ask you was that more about the Aggie offense or the lack of defense by the Bruins. That game would be the only time the Aggies would break the 300 yard mark.

What’s disturbing after looking back at the game logs, the Aggie run game would only break 200 yards two more times. That would be against Arkansas and South Carolina.

I gave the unit a B at the midway point. The breakdown was 382, 195, 179, 285, 237, 71 and 95 through seven games. That number adds up to 1,444 yards, did you know the Aggies would only rush for 1,908 for the season?

Based on that the blame goes to everyone. Games against Mississippi State, Auburn, New Mexico, Ole Miss and LSU should’ve helped the stats not hurt. And I do not want to hear about all the passing yards against New Mexico. That game the Aggies rushed 23 times for only 63 yards, that’s pitiful.

How about this? The Aggies only rushed for more than four yards per carry in a game once after September. Can anyone guess which game that was? It was against Auburn, the other games were 1.8, 2.2, 3.4, 2.7, 2.7 and 2.0, that’s not good enough.

In comparison to 2016, the Aggies did not get to the four yard per carry only three times. With the inability to run the ball in 2017, it made the offense one-dimensional way too often. I also want everyone to think about the stretch when the Aggies could not throw it either.

Hopefully Williams and company will have a bounce back year in 2018. We should see a different type of running game, the question is will the result be any different?