As the Texas A&M football team gets into the SEC schedule, one thing is becoming abundantly clear — the offense may not be able to match up to any intraconference team’s defense. Heck, the Aggies haven’t proven that they can put up points against any Power Five team yet.
A home game against Mississippi State will be extremely telling.
So far, A&M is averaging just 8.5 points per contest against Power Five teams. In all likelihood, that will improve against a pretty average Mississippi State defense. Still, the question stands — what if this offense is still terrible?
Even more importantly, what if Zach Calzada has another bad game on a big stage?
At what point should the Texas A&M football coaches consider benching Zach Calzada in favor of freshman Eli Stowers?
To be clear, there’s no reason to believe that the staff is moving toward benching Zach Calzada — this is merely speculation. That said, how many times can this team score ten or fewer points before a drastic change is made?
It’s clear that Calzada isn’t going to lead an elite offense, but at some point, he has to be able to lead an average one. On the year, the Aggie quarterback has completed 52.8% of his passes for 609 yards, four touchdowns, and three interceptions. These numbers were also inflated in a blowout win against New Mexico.
Hypothetically speaking, if Calzada has a rough performance against Mississippi State, should the coaches move him to the bench in favor of Stowers?
The issue here stands in the fact that the Aggies didn’t think they’d be using their third-string quarterback this year. Freshman Eli Stowers has been splitting reps between the quarterback spot and the tight end spot. According to Jimbo Fisher, this hasn’t changed, even with Haynes King’s injury. There should already be existing worries about a true freshman’s knowledge of the offense — with fewer reps as a quarterback, this worry becomes amplified.
I’d like to think that Calzada has one more unproductive half of wiggle room before he’s sent to the bench, but I’m not sure A&M coaches believe that his backup is any readier. For this reason, it’s hard to see Calzada being benched for a guy who may not be any more productive.
The other part of this is that coaches will have no inspiration to bench Calzada if the team continues to win. Heck, even if the Aggies win in a low-scoring dogfight, what’s the purpose in benching a guy who is bringing you victories? King could only be misses as few as two games.
That said, one of those two games comes against ‘Bama. Keeping Calzada in the game feels like a team that is metaphorically waving the white flag before the game even starts.
Texas A&M’s coaches will have a decision to make, and that decision will have to come sometime in the next 14 days.