Texas A&M Football: First Look – ULM Warhawks

After a disappointing setback loss to the Miami Hurricanes, Texas A&M football will turn its attention to their upcoming opponent: the Louisiana-Monroe Warhawks. After the debacle of last Saturday, this opponent is a welcome sight for the Aggies. Terry Bowden’s bunch, for all the coaching cache his last name brings, is not exactly an intimidating foe—SP+ has them as the 114th-ranked FBS team (for context, New Mexico is 123rd).

Despite this lowly ranking, ULM is currently 2-0—though, it should be said, that 2-0 ranking comes courtesy of a 17-13 win over Army and a 24-14 win over FCS opponent Lamar. Neither very convincing! The offense for this Warhawk squad is very poor, notching a total of only 682 yards through two games and failing to break 100 passing yards in either contest. This is a team committed to running the football—which, if last game’s approach is of any predictive value, the Aggies should be well-equipped to handle defensively.

The ULM defense has met both of their tests well thus far, relatively speaking. They’ve given up an average of 3.41 YPC, and only allowed 1.3 points per opportunity to opposing teams (an opportunity being defined as a team advancing the ball past their opponent’s 40 yard line).

The Warhawks have been more susceptible to the pass, but I expect the Aggies to be relatively balanced in their approach. This is another game where the Aggies will likely be pretty vanilla as Petrino begins to scheme for the Auburn matchup in week 4. If ULM doesn’t challenge A&M in the same way as New Mexico by throwing as many men at the line of scrimmage as possible, we will likely see shorter throws out of Conner than we did in week 1. That said, of course, such a strategy should give a greater opportunity to the Aggie playmakers get into the open field with their superior athleticism.

This is another tune-up game, but one where the pass defense specifically will be under scrutiny. A good performance could be fool’s gold for Texas A&M football, but it could also be said that this is an opportunity to begin to right the wrongs of what went south on South Beach. If the defense for Texas A&M football plays a clean game, there’s no reason the Aggies shouldn’t keep the Warhawks in the single digits offensively, if not shut them out altogether. 45-3 Aggies is my prediction for this one. BTHOulm.