Texas A&M now has only a few days left until they kick the season off against the Missouri State Bears, and excitement is slowly building. Of course, against an opponent like Missouri State, there are going to be some who consider this to be a meaningless first game— it’s no Notre Dame, like we saw two years back, in fairness.
That doesn’t mean, however, that there is nothing we can take away from this game as fans. To the contrary, actually— though overreactions are inevitable, there are quite a few things we can learn about this team from the first game.
Let’s take a look at some key areas where Aggie fans have questions about this team and what Saturday’s contest might say about Mike Elko’s squad in those areas.
What Texas A&M fans can take away from opener against Missouri State
Has Marcel Reed’s intermediate accuracy taken a step?
Reed wowed fans last season with the progress he had made on his deep passing. The Aggies’ offense, in all honesty, was probably a bit too reliant on that deep passing, leading to a fair bit of offensive inconsistency— when the Aggies needed the reliable pickup, things were too hit or miss.
While Reed won’t be under the kind of pressure, whether in-game or overall, against the Bears that he will be later in the season, there will still be a degree to which fans can measure if his passing in the intermediate area— especially over the middle— has taken the step that it needs to.
In the early part of the season last year, in the Aggies’ opener against UTSA, we saw some concerning signs here— a wide-open KC Concepcion was having to make extremely acrobatic catches when coming over the middle, for example. Not every pass will be picture-perfect, but we’ll have a baseline ability to measure just how improved Marcel has gotten in this area— because the Aggies will need it down the stretch.
Just how deep are the lines of scrimmage?
While no Texas A&M fan expects that any one player will be able to replicate the monster year that Cashius Howell had last season, there’s been a lot of excitement about the future of the position group as a whole. Anto Saka and Marco Jones as a duo will be intimidating off the edge, for sure, but how will TJ Searcy, Ryan Henderson, Sam M’Pemba, and others down the depth chart end up looking?
As the Aggies cycle through their roster in what figures to be an emphatic win, we’ll get a chance to see those names in a game setting. Who flashes? Who looks like they’re just a little bit meh? You can certainly read too much into this kind of thing, but if the Aggies’ third-stringers still look like complete terrors out there, it’s a good sign going forward.
The same can be said for the offensive line. It figures that Texas A&M will be able to get some of the backups in on that side of the ball, but we know that Adam Cushing loves to have a deep rotation up front, so it may be well before garbage time that we get a look at them. Quality depth will behoove A&M in this season more than ever before, given the move to 9 SEC games, so this is an important thing to take note of.
Have the Aggies gotten better at avoiding self-inflicted wounds?
This is a great test case for what has been the number one elephant in the room so far throughout the Mike Elko era: can the Aggies play a clean game? Penalties have been a huge issue throughout these last two years, and though A&M was able to, for example, overcome a penalty-filled game against Notre Dame, that’s not a recipe for long-term success.
Can this Texas A&M team display a focus and determination against the Bears that will translate to these larger environments? There will be a temptation to be a bit more laissez-faire against a lesser opponent, but what A&M fans need to see is their team playing to a standard rather than an opponent.
This is a mindset thing more than anything else. Clean execution across the board will be a huge plus for this team— one or two minor mental mistakes isn’t a big deal, but if the Aggies are able to overall keep a clean sheet, it will say a lot about where this team is headed.
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