What could Texas A&M football fans see against McNeese to halt fanbase’s meltdown?

What can Texas A&M football do against McNeese to sate disillusioned section of fanbase?

If you have detected a sharp increase of dissatisfaction in the Texas A&M football fanbase here recently, you are not dreaming. Ever since the opening loss to Notre Dame, there’s a distinct section of Aggie fans who have been nothing short of relentlessly negative regarding this team.

Of course, this is not to say that there’s no reason for disappointment in how the Aggies played last Saturday. There’s very clear ways in which the Aggies need to improve on both sides of the ball as the season presses forward.

However, the level of doom and gloom we’ve seen from some quarters is entirely too excessive. The sky is absolutely not falling for this Aggie program, no matter how traumatized you are from the previous regime. To their credit, there are some who have gone back and actually watched the film and seen the reasons for hope as well as the areas for improvement—but there are still those who continue to grouse for its own sake.

So that raises this question: is there anything this Aggie team can do this weekend to quell the disquieted and disgruntled fans who have steadily grown louder since Saturday? Well, given the opponent, that could be a big ask.

Not, of course, because it’s a tough opponent; rather, it’s because of the exact opposite. No matter what the Aggies do that’s positive, fans will simply chalk it up to the fact that “it’s McNeese.”

There’s some truth to that. This will be the Aggies’ easiest opponent of the year—the Cowboys are not even a very good FCS team.

But still, we can watch certain facets of the game closely. How dialed in does Conner Weigman seem as a passer? How do his feet look in the pocket? How well are the running backs following their blocks? Are the safeties in position in run support?

Close observation—which inherently takes work, of course—is not the trade of everyone in any fanbase. We have to avoid lazy analysis in two respects—firstly, that the Aggies’ loss to Notre Dame is a referendum on the season (with a game tied halfway through the fourth quarter, think how close things were to being different—and would a different result, with very similar processes to achieve that result, make you feel better?), and secondly, that however much the Aggies beat McNeese by, we can’t learn anything from how it happened.

There are things still to glean from a game like this. I don’t expect the dissatisfied fans to pipe down about their pet peeves for quite some time, given how the Aggies’ schedule sets up, and certainly not due to anything from this game. But don’t be fooled—there’s much to be learned from how the Aggies attack this game.