You don't appreciate Texas A&M's third down dominance enough

The third down defense for Texas A&M football over the last three games— in other words, since conference play started— has been a topic of a lot of discussion. It's gotten to the point that it is a massive shock when an opponent actually picks up the first rather than bring the punt unit out— that's sort of what happens when you hold teams to 2-of-34 on third down through three games.

"Dominant" doesn't feel like it's even an appropriate word to describe what we're seeing out of the Aggies on the "money down" over the past few games. There's a huge role that Kyle Field has played in this statistic, of course, but the ability to put teams in unfavorable downs and distances on first and second down and then let everyone loose on third has shown up big time.

Even though it's been talked about so much, though, this soul-crushing suffocation by the Aggie defense is still not yet appreciated enough by the fan base. There's more context needed to describe just how eye-popping this statistic really is.

Texas A&M's third down dominance could lead them to national title contention

The following graphic from SEC Network shows just how insane this statistic from Texas A&M actually is. In the last 30 seasons, through three games of conference play, the Aggies are almost twice as good on third down when compared to the next team on the list:

That includes two of Nick Saban's best defenses at Alabama, as well as 1996 Florida. It's worth noting that all of the other teams on this graphic won the national championship that year— and the Aggie faithful hope their dominance in this respect will be enough to bring their team to the same fate.

This level of play has been enough to bring the Aggies to the front of these rankings nationally, which is remarkable given that they surrendered a 47% conversion rate to Notre Dame in their game up in South Bend:

Whether that was a product of Notre Dame being remarkably good on offense, the game being on the road, or some combination thereof is something we will see in the future. Regardless of whatever complaints can be brought about the competition that the Aggies have faced in order to bring about this statistic so far this year, it remains extremely impressive.

In other words, even if you think this is a product of A&M facing bad offenses, plenty of SEC teams have faced bad offenses over the past 30 years, and not one— including all the Nick Saban units we saw in Tuscaloosa— have been near as dominant as the Aggies have so far. We'll see how this bears out over the rest of the season, but this is a heck of a building block for this defense so far.