Texas A&M is the dark horse SEC contender that people are just now acknowledging

Texas A&M football proved themselves to be a legitimate dark horse SEC contender with Saturday's huge win

Before Saturday, Texas A&M football had never been 3-0 in the SEC. Even in 2012 and 2020, the Aggies' most successful years to date in the conference, it was an early loss that proved to be the ultimate hindrance to the Ags—Florida in 2012 and Alabama in 2020.

Well, the Aggies yet again have an early loss this season... but not to an SEC team. For as much of a bummer as the Notre Dame setback was, the Irish are an independent team.

That means that the Aggies still hold an unblemished conference record. Not only unblemished, but they have two more wins than any other team still undefeated in conference.

This is no doubt part of what has the Aggies now projected, via Kelley Ford's KFord Ratings, to end up in Atlanta at the end of the year.

In an intriguing twist, Ford has the Atlanta matchup as the Aggies facing the Texas Longhorns, which would of course be a rematch from the previous week's game in Kyle Field. Now, wouldn't that be juicy?

Maybe the most intriguing part of this, if you're a Texas A&M football fan, is that this team is now operating with a much higher offensive ceiling than it did for most of the first part of the year. With Weigman back in the saddle, things look far better going forward for the Aggies on that front than they did previously.

In other words, the Aggies' rating will only continue to rise, even as teams like Texas will come back to earth a little bit as they begin to play programs other than ULM, UTSA, and Colorado State.

The proof of concept is out there now. The Aggies have shown who and what they can be—and it wasn't thanks to some insane bounces of the ball that they played as well as they did. The domination the Aggies showcased against a legitimately good squad (albeit one that isn't playing as well as they can at the moment) was not something we have often seen out of the Aggies over the last dozen years.

Everything is still in front of this Texas A&M football team. They just have to go out there and take it.