Texas A&M Football: Aggies’ early struggles are over-exaggerated

The Texas A&M Football team’s season hasn’t gone as many expected it to. Yes, A&M is 3-0, but the team’s offensive shortcomings have dropped them to the 7th spot in the AP Poll. Media outlets are starting to have less and less hope that the Aggies will defeat Alabama and win the SEC West.

In turn, the Aggies’ College Football Playoff hopes have also shrunk in the media. Heck, many analysts don’t even think Texas A&M can defeat Arkansas and extend their winning streak against the Hogs to double-digits.

Here’s why the Texas A&M Football team’s early struggles have been overblown by the media

It all starts with the game that caused some to prematurely jump ship — an away game at Colorado in Week 2.

The offense was underperforming from the get-go. Haynes King only played in two drives before his injury. Those drives resulted in an injury and a missed field goal. Still, the offense was picking up some momentum.

Then, the injury happened.

Calzada came in the game and looked rattled. Perhaps he wasn’t adequately prepared. Maybe he simply didn’t have chemistry with the rest of the offense as the team’s backup. Whatever the case was, he couldn’t advance the football if his life depended on it. Eventually, he settled in enough to have a near-perfect go-ahead touchdown-scoring drive in the fourth quarter.

Then, he had a sharp game against New Mexico. He did throw an interception, but the player who picked off his pass was one of the most talented players on the field in Tavian Combs. Outside of that play, he looked like a Texas A&M starting quarterback.

In fact, if you remove the Colorado game, which had extraneous circumstances, the Aggies’ have one of the statistically better offenses in the country. Their 37.5 points per game would place them in the top-40 of college football and half of the sample size in that regard is behind the arm of a backup quarterback.

So outside of the Colorado game, which Calzada and the coaching staff were clearly unprepared for, we have no reason to sound the alarms. The defense still looks great. Heck, the defense looks even more elite than we had anticipated — particularly in the passing game.

The Aggies have allowed the fewest passing yards per game in the country by a wide margin with 77.3 per contest. Opposing teams have yet to reach the endzone through the air against Fisher’s squad.

Yes, the offense isn’t the explosive Johnny Manziel offense from a decade ago, but it’s serviceable until Haynes King returns.

Even the primary concern behind the running game is slightly overexaggerated. Sure, Spiller and Achane haven’t produced as much as expected, specifically struggling against Colorado. The best way to phrase it is that they have left much to be desired. Part of the onus here is on the offensive line.

That said, the running game is just another domino that fell when King injured his leg. Opposing teams know that the Aggies will rely on the run game, which makes the offense easier to defend in general.

We’ll learn a lot about this team against Arkansas. If there’s one takeaway from this article, it’s this. Hit the brakes on the overreactions for now — we won’t know what this team is capable of until they’re knee-deep in SEC play.