Data shows just how misleading final score of Texas A&M's game vs Auburn was

Texas A&M football fans were frustrated with the final score of the Auburn game— not because of a loss, of course, but rather because the score did not accurately reflect the delta between these two teams.

The Aggies only won by six points, but considering the massive amounts of penalties— which caused the Aggies to lose a total of 119 yards— as well as the fact that they missed two kicks, it should have been more. The Aggies had several touchdowns called back due to penalties as well— including some controversial late flags on very close calls, such as the Ar'maj Reed-Adams ineligible man downfield call at the end of the game.

Despite the frustration from those types of calls, the defense responded each time by absolutely suffocating the opposing offense. Auburn was completely unable to get things moving when they had the ball thanks to the way the Aggie defense was playing. It was this sense that had Aggie fans thinking that A&M had performed far better against Auburn than that final score suggested— and as it turns out, they were right.

Data shows that Texas A&M's victory over Auburn was far more emphatic than final score showed

The following chart, put out by Parker Fleming each week, tracks the net success rates of each game in the FBS. The higher your net success rate, the better you were at the "down to down business of moving the football," as Fleming says in a follow up tweet. You can view below where the Aggies ended up:

Texas A&M had the second-biggest beatdown in FBS vs FBS matchups this week, according to this number, only behind Utah, who defeated West Virginia 48-14.

The Aggies had a higher net success rate than Notre Dame did over Arkansas— and the Irish absolutely embarrassed the Hogs, 56-13, at home. So why does the Aggies' final score look so much different than those two games?

Here are appropriate questions to ask about that margin, from Fleming's own words: "Huge net success rate and didn't win by much? Where might you have failed to take advantage of good situations or made mistakes on drives that altered the score? What does that tell us about going forward?"

That resonates pretty strongly with the Aggies. Two missed kicks, a touchdown called back by penalty, a promising drive ending up as a turnover on a screen pass that ended up being a touchdown in Auburn's favor... if all of those went the other way for the Ags (not to mention the penalties in general that stymied the Aggies), then the final score is a 30-point margin, not 6.

For reference, here's the chart from last week— note OU's net success rate right in the middle of the chart.

Oklahoma had about a 12% net success rate, while the Aggies had about a 22% net success rate. That's a noticeable difference!

All that to say that Aggie fans should not simply be box score watchers when it comes to this outcome. Take a look a little deeper at what actually happened in the game!