Three takeaways from Texas A&M football’s escape from Arkansas in Jerryworld

Three takeaways from Texas A&M football vs. Arkansas: Weigman needs to get back ASAP

Texas A&M football fans can breathe a sigh of relief, if only for a moment. The always-stressful game against Arkansas is now behind the Aggies, and they have once more emerged victorious—now winning 12 out of the last 13 against the hapless Razorbacks.

But just like always, it didn’t come easy. Even though this technically was a home game for the Aggies, it never quite felt like a comfortable environment for this team, especially on offense, and the Razorbacks weren’t as rattled as the average visitor to Kyle Field.

Bobby Petrino suffered his first loss in this series—he was 3-0 with the Hogs as head coach and 1-0 with the Aggies as OC. He schemed up the A&M defense a couple of times for some long plays, but at the end of the day, the Aggies only gave up 2 touchdowns total.

So what can we learn from a game like this? Let’s dive in.

Three takeaways from Texas A&M football vs. Arkansas: Aggie offense is handicapped with Reed

I’ve been banging this drum for a while: Marcel Reed, for all the praise he deserves (which is plenty!), is not the guy at QB1 moving forward. We can talk until we’re blue in the face about the fact that he seems poised in big moments or that he can run the ball, but it doesn’t take away his accuracy issues.

There was a lot of misplaced angst about Collin Klein’s play calling throughout the game. The real culprit of those fans’ frustrations, though, was Reed. 

We begged for years for an OC that fit his scheme to his talent, and when Klein attempts to do that for a guy who lacks the ability to execute in the deep passing game—thus allowing defenses to key in on him—fans begin to complain.

The fact of the matter is this: while Arkansas has a decent run defense, their pass defense is atrocious. If you had a capable passer back there, this is nowhere near as close as it ended up being. Reed deserves props for getting the Aggies to 3-0 with him behind center, but you simply cannot have him at QB1 going forward if you want to achieve everything this team is capable of.