3 Takeaways From Brutal Loss to Ole Miss by Texas A&M Football

Offensive line for Texas A&M football steadily improving

Don’t look now, but the Aggie front actually kind of played a good game today. I expected coming into this one that Ole Miss DC Pete Golding would be leaning heavily on pressures to knock the Aggie offense off track. Well, he certainly brought a lot of blitzes, but more often than not, the Aggies actually picked them up really well. The weakest point was at the beginning of the day, but at the end of the first half and down all throughout the second, I found myself noting how well the Aggies were protecting Johnson. On one play very late, the Rebels brought a huge number of rushers, and the Aggies gave Max enough time even then to comfortably find his hot route. It was an impressive showing against a ferocious front for the Rebels, who were held to both their lowest sack and tackle for loss output of the year.

It wasn’t just in the passing game, either. As the game wore on, the Aggie offensive front really started to lean on the Rebels in the run game. While it wasn’t the best day for Rueben Owens on the ground, the other two backs in the stable for Texas A&M football had pretty outstanding outings. Le’Veon Moss (who exited with injury) ended the day with 52 yards on 9 carries, and Amari Daniels had 70 yards on 12 carries, with both backs averaging 5.8 yards per carry. That’s pretty impressive given how things have gone thus far this year.

This is not a referendum on Addazio at all, to be clear. I think you need to take the whole body of work into account, and things have been a struggle more often than not up front with him as the position coach. That said, though, it was good to see this Aggie front execute well against a defense that notches a lot of sacks, essentially neutralizing them for most of the day.