Aggies Football Surging After Rough Start To Season
The Texas A&M football season started with a bang, sort of, with a win over Kent State, and optimism was high going into Week 2 and the Colorado Buffaloes in Denver, Colorado.
Then a funny thing happened on the way to the SEC Championship: Colorado.
The Aggies suffered the first blow of the season, not with a loss on the scoreboard, but with a loss of their starting quarterback, Haynes King. Enter Zach Calzada, who was touted to be every bit the quarterback King is, only less mobile, but maybe more accurate.
By the end of the 10-7 win in Denver, A&M fans were wondering, "what just happened?" King was out for the season and it took a miracle come-from-behind scoring drive by Calzada and the Aggies' offense to beat an unranked Buffaloes team.
Optimism quickly changed to fear and doubt about the Aggies 2021 football season. Week 3 brought New Mexico to town, and while Calzada didn't exactly fire on all cylinders, the defense pitched a shut-out, and things were looking up.
Then came the strangest three-week period in recent memory for A&M football fans, with in-conference losses to Arkansas and Mississippi State, that changed Aggies fan's fear and doubt to despair and distrust.
Then something wonderful, if not magical happened: Unranked Aggies 41, No. 1 Crimson Tide 38.
A&M is clearly a much better team than the 3-2 Aggies team we saw through five weeks. The week before losing to the Aggies, Alabama beat then-No. 10 Ole Miss by three touchdowns. What's more, in the two games since the loss at Kyle Field, Nick Saban, & Co. have registered a combined 101 points in wins over Mississippi State and Tennessee.
We're all familiar with the way 'the Tide' rolls, and there's very little chance Alabama drops one of their remaining games against LSU, Arkansas, or Auburn. In fact, odds are probably higher that they'll do what they did last time they lost to A&M in 2012, repeat as national champions.
That win at Kyle Field on Oct. 6 set into place a whole new set of emotions for Aggies fans everywhere: trust, confidence, and hopefulness. It also sparked a three-game winning streak the A&M football program enjoys during the bye week.
But the 5-2 Aggies can and should only focus on what they can control, and that's winning out the last four weeks of the season.
To finish 2021, A&M hosts No. 21 Auburn after the bye, visits Oxford, Mississippi to take on No. 10 Ole Miss, welcomes non-conference foe Prairie View, and travels to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to finish the regular season against LSU.
Auburn has not lost at Kyle Field since the Aggies joined the SEC, Ole Miss touts a Heisman contender, and beating LSU in Coach O's final game could be a tall order.
The final four weeks won't be easy, but it's certainly not impossible for A&M to run the table the rest of the way.
Maybe more important in the big picture of the 2021 A&M football season, the things that caused the Aggies to struggle early on, injuries and inexperience, seem to be a distant memory.
This Aggies team has learned a multitude of lessons in just a few short weeks, everything from how to deal with a young, inexperienced offensive line, to a season-ending injury to their starting quarterback.
Coach Jimbo Fisher and this young A&M football team not only deserve a week off but a ton of credit. This roller coaster of an Aggies season would've broken lesser teams, and lesser fan bases,
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