10 Notable Numbers from Texas A&M Football vs. ULM

10 Statistics from Texas A&M Football’s Latest Game

We do it every week—it’s time to talk about some of the most interesting and telling numbers from the last contest for Texas A&M football.

0 – passing yards allowed in the second half. Jiya Wright, the QB for ULM, notched each of his 95 passing yards before halftime, at which point I was sure that the Warhawks would exceed 100 yards passing for the first time this year. The Aggie defense buckled down, though, not giving ULM the chance. They attempted only 6 passes in the second half, in large part because they could not get a single first down until the third-stringers were on the field for Texas A&M football.

0 – third down conversions allowed by the first-team Aggie defense. ULM finally converted their first third down against the bottom of the Aggie roster on a 12-yard run by Charlie Norman with little time left in the game. It wouldn’t count for much, though, as they would be stopped on 4th down on the ensuing series, and the Aggies would kneel it out. The Aggies lead the conference and are third in the nation in third down conversion rate allowed at a mark of 20.59%.

64% – third down conversion rate by Texas A&M football in this contest. Their 51% season mark for 3rd down conversion would lead the conference but for LSU’s 57% number, bolstered not a little by their 79% rate against FCS Grambling. The Aggies, however, do lead the conference in differential between offensive and defensive third down conversion rate—30 percentage points.

557 – yards of offense against the Warhawks. This is the second-highest mark for Texas A&M football against an FBS team in Jimbo’s tenure, with the highest number coming against Kent State in the opener two years ago—595.

4.71 – average points per red zone trip against ULM (XPs excluded). You’d like this number to be much closer to if not equal six; however, Texas A&M football does have a…

95% – rate of scoring in the red zone so far this year, including 100% in this game. I get that you want to come away with six and not three when you’re inside the 20, but reliably converting opportunities into points is how you build an efficient offense.

4.27 – points per drive against ULM. The Aggie total for the season is 3.67, good 3rd in the conference behind Ole Miss and LSU. For context, Texas A&M football managed a lowly 1.73 points per drive last year.

33% – margin of success rate between A&M and ULM, good for the highest of any matchup of the weekend. Simply put, success rate is a measure of how efficiently you can stay on schedule and ahead of the chains as an offense. You can read more about it in my earlier article, found here.

3 – games in which the Aggies have exceeded their opponents’ success rate. Yes, you read that right—even in the loss to Miami, the Aggies held the edge in success rate. You may be asking, then, how good of a stat it really is—to which I would answer that sometimes the stats that have the most predictive value moving forward for a team are not necessarily the ones that are a bellwether for an individual game’s outcome, though success rate tends to do that as well. It was not down-in and down-out dominance that lost the game for A&M in Coral Gables; rather, it was the explosive plays that got Texas A&M football beaten against the Hurricanes.

68% – percentage of average YPC allowed to ULM. The Warhawks came in averaging over 6 yards per carry, and the Aggies held them to only 4.1 despite a huge run by QB Jiya Wright. This and other metrics continue to portend a much better rush defense than what the Aggies put out on the field last year.