Texas A&M football: Aggies can salvage season with win at Auburn

By Jeff Shull | Oct 29, 2018

(Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images) /

Texas A&M football is at a crossroads: win at Auburn and all will feel right again, lose and it could spell disaster for Jimbo Fisher’s first season at the helm.

After nearly defeating Clemson and ripping off three straight wins in SEC play, with some pretty impressive numbers on both sides of the ball, it felt like this Texas A&M football season was already different from a Kevin Sumlin version.

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Entering the Mississippi State game, A&M was No. 3 in the country in time of possession. It meant the defense would be fresh, which meant the Aggies could avoid the late-season collapse.

The Aggies also had a top five rush defense and, if you compared opponents with the others in the top five, you could make the argument they had the best run defense in the country. This was supposed to be a strength against their remaining opponents who prefer to run the ball. It meant the Aggies could avoid the late-season collapse.

Finally, the way Fisher seems to have got his players to buy in made this year feel different. It ain’t like it used to be, or at least we thought.

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Reality set in on Saturday night. Mississippi State did what they’ve done to the Aggies four of the last five meetings: exploited a defensive weakness and played great defensive themselves. Joe Moorhead let struggling Nick Fitzgerald loose, and he carved up the Aggies to the tune of 241 yards, two touchdowns, and another 84-yard completion that set up a short TD run.

Fitzgerald accounted for all four of State’s touchdowns and is A&M’s kryptonite that usually ignites the late-season collapse. This means the importance of winning at Auburn this weekend has amped up.

Obviously you want to win every game, but avoiding a loss this weekend is a must for Fisher to silence the critics who say the Aggies aren’t much better than they were a year ago. For anyone who actually watched A&M up to Saturday night, that notion was folly. Now it feels they are on the brink of the collapse we’ve come to know the last half-decade.

The college football regular season can be a wild roller coaster ride. In the span of three weeks, Aggie fans could be flying high, to down in the dumps, and could get right back to feeling optimistic about the future of this program and the 2018 season with a win over Auburn.

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There will still be work to do against Ole Miss and LSU, but winning at Auburn can save the Aggies’ season. Few believed A&M would go 2-1 in the stretch with South Carolina, Mississippi State and Auburn all on the road. Doing so would put a stamp on the positive direction of this program.

#BTHOauburn

Jeff Shull is the Site Expert for the Gig Em Gazette on FanSided. Follow him on Twitter, and be sure to follow the Gig Em Gazette on Facebook and Twitter.