The Texas A&M Football team came into their matchup against the Colorado Buffaloes as a heavy favorite. The game, however, did not go as planned. Instead, the Aggies struggled for 60 minutes, not holding a lead until there were just five minutes remaining in the contest.
They got the win, but it wasn’t pretty.
The same offense that put up 41 points in their first contest of the season only managed to put up ten points in total. There are a lot of words that could be used to describe this game but one rises above the rest — worrisome.
The game ended 10-7 in a hair-greying, low-scoring matchup.
Today, I’m going to go over three reasons why you need to worry about the Aggies going forward in 2021.
Reason No. 1: The Texas A&M Football team may have to go without their starting quarterback
The first, and perhaps most obvious worry, is in regards to Haynes King, who left the game early against Colorado with a leg injury after a rough hit. After he left the game, the Texas A&M offense was, well… terrible.
Texas A&M managed to collect less than half of the yardage that they did a week ago. They still outgained Colorado, but the offense looked worse than it has in the Jimbo Fisher era. That, in itself, was the saving grace of Saturday’s game — the defense was good enough to allow for such terrible offense.
But this raises serious concern’s about this team’s ability to operate without King under center. Colorado has had a stingy defense under Karl Dorrell, but their unit pales in comparison to some SEC units that A&M will see this year.
We still don’t know when King will be back (as of Saturday night) and it doesn’t seem like this offense can function without him.
Reason No. 2: The Texas A&M Football team’s running game did not look good
Granted, it’s much easier to defend the run when you know it’s coming each play. With Haynes King out, the Aggies were now using a first-year starter who lost a quarterback competition in his first game with four new starting offensive linemen.
That’s a lot of words to say something very simple — Texas A&M had to run the ball a lot on Saturday.
Zach Calzada wasn’t bad, but he was pretty inaccurate. He completed fewer than half of his pass attempts and didn’t look nearly as confident as King ordinarily does. He finished with an underwhelming QBR of 49.9.
This, however, didn’t feel like the biggest issue on the night. In fact, most would describe Calzada’s performance as adequate. I’d make the argument that two infinitely more important players are the ones who handcuffed this offense. Those players are Isaiah Spiller and Devon Achane.
Again, these two have a great excuse in that Colorado knew the Aggies’ offense would rely on the two runningbacks. As a result, the rush defense — at least from a play-calling perspective — was easy for Dorrell’s unit.
Still, you’d like to see your two star runningbacks, both of whom looked like All-SEC players in Week 1, rush for more than 70 yards combined. More specifically, Isaiah Spiller only managed to collect 20 yards on the ground on eight rushing attempts, having one of the worst outings of his career. He did manage to catch the game-winning touchdown and reel in over 50 yards through the air, but his night as a whole was disappointing.
This team struggled because of the quarterback situation, but the runningbacks didn’t help them at all.
Reason No. 3: The Texas A&M Football team may not have time to settle in before Haynes King returns
As of the time that I’m writing this post, we don’t know much of anything about Haynes King’s injury. He could be back next week and he could be out for a few weeks. The following tweet is all we have via TexAgs on Twitter.
Jimbo Fisher on Haynes King's injury: "We're still waiting. There is not a final analysis yet."
— TexAgs (@TexAgs) September 11, 2021
A positive is that he did originally get up immediately after the play. Outside of ACL tears, which this was obviously not, players don’t generally walk around on an injury that takes them out of the game for a significant amount of time. This points toward the fact that he may return relatively soon.
But how soon?
At some point, if this team settles in with Zach Calzada under center, King’s return will disrupt the flow of the offense, even if he’s the better player. With the Alabama game less than a month away, it’s extremely important that this team gets into a groove, especially with their rocky performances the past couple of weeks.
The primary issue here is that even if King is able to return, the Texas A&M Football coaching staff may be hesitant to involve him as much in the running game. After a scary injury like this, they have to consider the long-term future of this team.
At the end of the day, we know nothing about this situation right now other than the fact that it is not a good one. More details will develop as the week progresses and, in all likelihood, we’ll get our best insights during Jimbo Fisher’s weekly press conference on Monday.