Texas A&M’s loss to Kentucky exacted a heavy toll in many ways, including injuries to several key players, but it’s definitely going to be felt today in the new AP Poll rankings. The Aggies started off the season in the top 10 of the poll, but after their loss to the Wildcats, they are going to slide quite a bit— if not completely out of the poll.
The Aggies were up at no. 9 coming into this week with a chance to rise thanks to LSU and Ole Miss— both ranked ahead of the Aggies— playing each other. Instead, the Aggies are now wondering just how far they will fall ahead of a pivotal game in Baton Rouge next week.
Most teams right below the Aggies won their games— Alabama, BYU, USC, Texas Tech (barely), Penn State, and Tennessee all emerged victorious. No. 16 SMU fell to Louisville, however, in a ranked matchup. I think we see the Aggies fall past all of these teams and end up landing around the no. 18 spot, just ahead of Michigan and Missouri, who both really struggled with lesser opponents.
Texas A&M’s Week 3 AP Poll slide should land them in the high teens
It’s possible that voters end up penalizing the Aggies even more for this one, however. While I think A&M is still a better team than most of the squads that they are set to fall behind, the “eye test” voter will not be kind to the Aggies after the way this game unfolded.
The way that the game took place has to factor in for voters that were watching— which is going to be a higher number than normal thanks to the fact that the other big games in that time slot were in weather delays. The Wildcats put it to the Aggies on the second half, shocking the A&M faithful— this has been a team under Elko that has a penchant for slow starts but excels late.
With the depth of this A&M roster, fans thought that the late game would be the Aggies’ strength, but it was the Wildcats who looked fresh and ready to dominate as the game went on. In other words, not only was the loss itself damaging, but the way in which it happened might have been the bigger blow to the Aggies’ reputation.
That said, most voters tend to not way overreact to results like this when you’re talking about a team that has been in the top ten in the preseason. There’s a ceiling to just how far a team will move in a given poll, which should keep the Aggies from falling all the way from 9th to unranked.
Plus, you have teams like Houston and Virginia in the 20s that lost, the aforementioned struggles of Missouri and Michigan— not to mention Oklahoma, who only won by 8 over New Mexico at home— and others lower in the poll. Oregon’s 84-0 win over Portland State could lift them a bit from their current spot at 21, but I think that the 20 or 21 spot will be the absolute lowest the Aggies will fall.
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