Texas A&M football vs. Arkansas breakdown, analysis, and prediction: Who will emerge victorious in Southwest Classic?
Texas A&M football faces off against Arkansas this Saturday in the final edition of the Southwest Classic's stay in Arlington's AT&T Stadium. After this matchup, the game will return to an on-campus series—something for which fans have been very thankful.
Since the game began to take place up in DFW after the Aggies joined the SEC, it's been very maroon-tinted. Only in 2021 did the Razorbacks emerge victorious, despite being in prime position in several matchups prior to that point. Notable among those was the first game back in Jerryworld in 2014, in which the Hogs led by 14 in the 4th quarter.
Even though this series has been snakebitten for the Hogs, it never fails to provide Aggie fans with quite a lot of nervous moments. For that reason, it's usually one that A&M fans approach with a lot of trepidation, despite such a stellar record.
It's hard to discuss exactly how this year's matchup might play out, thanks to the opacity surrounding the Texas A&M quarterback situation. Marcel Reed and Conner Weigman possess extremely different playstyles, and the Hogs defense figures to be far more susceptible to the pass than the run.
For Arkansas's part, the Razorbacks have certainly exceeded expectations—such as they were coming into the season—up until this point. The Hogs looked more than competitive against a top-25 squad in the Oklahoma State Cowboys, and beating Auburn is a milestone for Sam Pittman and crew.
QB Taylen Green has been something of a revolution for the Razorback faithful. The Boise State transfer is a perfect fit for Bobby Petrino's RPO-heavy scheme, as evidenced by the tons of yardage they have rolled up on everyone but the Tigers so far.
That gives rise to a question, though: how exactly were the Tigers able to stymy the Hogs so thoroughly? What did their defense do to slow down Petrino's yardage machine? After all, even though the Razorbacks were the beneficiaries of five (!!!) Auburn giveaways, they only managed 334 yards in total on 83 plays.
That's where the schematic limitations of Petrino's offense and a guy like Green come in. If you can stay disciplined consistently against that RPO attack and you have the players to face off with the Razorbacks on the line of scrimmage, it can get hard for them to consistently make plays on offense.
Hence, Arkansas managed only a 38% success rate against the Tigers—for context, the Aggies' success rate against Notre Dame, back when they looked like they had the worst offense in the nation, was 40%. Can the Aggies have the same effect against Petrino and Pittman?
For whatever complaints fans have about the lack of sacks up front by this Aggie defensive line, I think they are still one of the best in the nation. Watching them displace opposing OLs so consistently gives every game a feel that there's a dam just about to burst, and opponents are well aware of it—and scheme around it. I think that will indeed make life onerous on the Arkansas offense.
The problem is that the Hogs have the potential to do something similar to the Aggies. While A&M's lowest rushing success rate of the year is 46% (a pretty decent mark), Arkansas has only allowed one team all year to exceed that number. Of course, their competition has been absolutely horrendous thus far (though they have Ollie Gordon, Oklahoma State has looked like a terrible running team), so that could play in here.
If the Ags are forced to play Marcel Reed, then I expect to see a very similar offensive approach to what we did against Florida. That was a masterfully called game by Collin Klein, and you could tell Marcel was in his comfort zone as well.
However, if the Hog defense is able to put the kibosh on that approach, then the Ags may be in hot water. Reed has yet to show his ability to stretch the field consistently with a run game not working, and the Hogs are all too happy to stack the box and man up on the outside.
That may be putting the cart ahead of the horse, here, though. There's still a very salient question of whether the Arkansas run defense is for real. OSU has yet to break 40% rushing success against any team, and UAB is no world-beater. It does say something, though, that Arkansas is allowing only 79% of opponent averages on a per-carry basis so far for the season against FBS competition.
That's why the Aggie OL versus the Arkansas DL is the story of the game for me. If Klein can scheme it up and the Maroon Goons can get rolling, this one could get out of hand quickly. If not, then it's really anybody's game.
We know the Hogs will want to ugly this one up. It's incumbent upon the Aggies to execute a clean offensive scheme and get out of dodge on Saturday—and I think they do just that. I'll stick with my previous prediction: 20-13 if it's Reed, 31-10 if it's Weigman.