The Texas A&M football team is one of the hottest squads in the country. This may seem far-fetched at first glance, as this is the same Aggie football team that lost their first two SEC contests to Arkansas and Mississippi State.
Since those losses happened, there hasn’t been a better football team in the country.
That said, most SEC Power Rankings don’t agree. In fact, if you look through the popular ones, Texas A&M generally lands around the fifth or sixth spot. This raises a question — should the Aggies be rated higher or do their two early losses hold them back enough to warrant their current positioning?
The Texas A&M football team’s season has been a tale of two halves
It’s easy to say that the Aggies have played great football outside of their two losses, but that simply would not be true. The warning signs were there that this team could struggle as early as the first game when Haynes King threw two touchdowns and three interceptions against Kent State.
Granted, Kent State had a solid pass defense, but it’s Kent State. A&M is far too talented to struggle in any capacity offensively against a MAC team.
Perhaps it was performances like this that painted this Texas A&M football team in a bad light to those who make power rankings. Regardless, after A&M’s pair of midseason losses, they haven’t cracked the top five in many rankings.
Take 247Sports as an example, which placed the Aggies at the five spot behind Kentucky and in front of Auburn. Here’s what they said about A&M’s placement.
"If you missed Saturday’s win over South Carolina, here’s a quick summation — the Aggies obliterated the Gamecocks in near record fashion, limiting a talent-strapped offense to six total yards through three quarters before giving up some points and yardage with their 2s in the final frame. It was a dominant performance in a trap-game scenario for Texas A&M, who hasn’t lost to South Carolina since entering the SEC."
In short, there’s really nothing bad that can be said about the Aggies at this point in time. They’re the highest-ranked two-loss team in the SEC. It seems like Texas A&M’s struggles are in the rearview mirror, and as you can see above, the Aggies are playing as dominant of football as you could ask for.
That said, without a loss for Auburn, Alabama, or Ole Miss, it simply would not make sense to rank them any higher than fifth. So to answer the overarching question of this article — no, it wouldn’t make sense for A&M to be ranked higher in any power rankings.
Still, Auburn and Ole Miss will clash this weekend, so you can expect Jimbo Fisher’s team to jump into the top four after a loss by one of the squads, even on a bye week.