Texas A&M Football: How would Aggies have performed in the Gator Bowl?

I’m almost tired of talking about it, but at this point in the offseason, I have to bring up the fact that the Texas A&M football team did not play in the originally planned Gator Bowl. A&M was selected for the game but would have to drop out due to COVID-19 complications.

For A&M fans, this was tragic, though the Aggies would have been a shadow of themselves in this game. With more than a handful of players ready to depart for the NFL Draft, Jimbo Fisher’s team would have been led by a handful of second-stringers and a walk-on freshman at the quarterback spot.

That said, it didn’t end up mattering — A&M would drop out of the bowl game and be replaced by Rutgers, who… well, they wet the bed. Wake Forest would beat the 5-7 Big Ten team by a final score of 38-10.

How would the Texas A&M football team have performed in the 2021 Gator Bowl?

Even though Texas A&M wouldn’t have been near full strength, it’s hard to believe that they would have taken a 38-10 loss to Wake Forest, a team that had been playing its worst football as of late.

So the question arises — how would a team full of Texas A&M’s backups have performed in the Gator Bowl.

To get to the bottom of this, it’s important to look into the statistics of what happened in the actual game that took place. Wake forest won dominantly, but they did so through the air against a Rutgers defense that ranks 66th in passing yards allowed per game.

A&M ranks 18th in the country in passing yards allowed per game and if you take it a step further, they rank 3rd in the nation in yards per completion. It’s hard to say that Fisher’s defense would have completely neutralized the passing game, but Wake Forest would not have been able to put up 38 points.

That said, the Aggies would have been missing Zach Calzada at quarterback and as mentioned, would have a walk-on freshman passing the ball. It would have been a run-heavy scheme for A&M without Isaiah Spiller. This would have been an extremely low-scoring game.

In all honesty, I don’t know that I’d necessarily give A&M the edge. At full health, however, I would give the Aggies a double-digit comfortable victory.