Texas A&M Football vs. Auburn Advanced Statistical Previews

Advanced Metrics Predict Texas A&M football vs Auburn

In our last edition of this column, the different advanced stat models were a clean sweep in favor of Texas A&M football over Miami. As we all now know, however, that is not how things shook out. Great object lesson in how to understand these projections! Take them with a grain of salt, know that they are judging things based on what each considers the most predictive and repeatable factors about how a team has performed thus far, and that weird bounces—like a kickoff returned for a touchdown—sometimes happen in a game! Finally, there are still as of yet few data points for the 2023 edition of each team, so there will still be surprises.

All that out of the way, let’s check in on our three statistical models and see how they size up the matchup between Texas A&M football and Auburn.

SP+ Favors Texas A&M Football over the Tigers

My personal favorite, SP+, has the Aggies triumphing in their initial SEC game.

Bill Connelly’s system has this one at a very traditional 28-21 score. The line when Connelly generated these had Texas A&M favored by 7, but there are some places now that have the game with A&M only favored by 6. This projection has this game right on that line.

SP+ ratings are predicated on success rate and explosiveness. The Aggies allowed a lot of explosives to Miami, but had a higher success rate by three percentage points. It looks like preventing big plays will be key for the Aggies in this one and going forward.

FEI Sees a Narrow Win for Texas A&M Football

FEI, a system built on points per drive efficiency, has the Aggies winning a very close game at home against the Tigers. Brian Fremeau, the architect of this metric, has his numbers favoring the Aggies by 1.7 points over the Tigers. The projected score is 22.3-20.6, so with rounding that would be 22-21. Quite the narrow margin of victory there!

In the raw rankings, Fremeau has the Tigers two spots ahead of the Aggies at 20. His system really likes the Auburn defense, ranking it 12th in the country at the current moment. Conversely, they dislike the Aggie defense, ranking them 41st. It is well possible that this is a symptom of the lack of data points in the early season, as his numbers also are still skeptical of the capabilities of Miami’s offense, so the defensive performance against the Hurricanes could be much more of an albatross around A&M’s neck than it will be as the season goes on.

EPA Model Also Likes Texas A&M Football to Win

Parker Fleming of CFBGraphs publishes his advanced stats previews on X (formerly Twitter) weekly, where you can find him at @statsowar. Here’s how his system sees the game:

I’ll dive into some of the particulars here more so tomorrow in my full opponent preview, but suffice it to say that the optimist in me sees several areas that I consider artificially deflated for Texas A&M football due to the (hopefully) uncharacteristic defensive performance against Miami, and several areas that I consider artificially inflated for Auburn based on what I’ve seen out of them so far. Even with those factors at play, Fleming’s numbers has the Aggies winning this one and covering the 6 point spread. From his preview here, a key to the game for the Aggie defense will be getting Auburn off-schedule on early downs, and a key for the Aggie offense will be to stay ahead of the chains and protect well against an aggressive Tiger front.

More to come tomorrow with the full preview!