Each Monday in After "Math", we'll take a look inside the numbers from the weekend's football game, and we'll do it through the words of the Aggie coaching staff.
For more insight on each football game, make sure to tune in to "The Pulse: Texas A&M Football" (Wednesdays, 4:00 PM CT on FOX Sports Southwest and 6:30 PM CT on KBTX-TV).
AFTER MATH: LSU
by Will Johnson '01
12th Man Productions
After losing three straight games in October (albeit to teams with a combined record of 30-6), the Aggies needed answers.
They took a week off to find them.
The search turned up a narrow victory over a lowly opponent (4-8 Louisiana-Monroe), a memorable one on the road over the defending SEC Champion. And finally, two close defeats to high-quality foes (Missouri and LSU) at home.
Mixed results, yes, but this team did get better down the stretch. In the end the Aggies answered a lot of questions.
Just not all of them.
On Thanksgiving night against LSU, the quandary of run defense remained.
After Missouri and Auburn found success on the ground in the games leading in, LSU did the same en route to a 23-17 victory at Kyle Field.
A&M allowed over 300 yards rushing in all of their final three contests.
The Aggies allowed 177.8 rush yards per game in their first 9 tilts of the season. They gave up an average of 360.7 in the last three. The team that ranks dead last in the country in rush defense is a different set of Aggies, New Mexico State, allowing 309.9.
Kevin Sumlin was prompted to make a move as a result, relieving defensive coordinator Mark Snyder of his duties on Friday. A trying dismissal that brings to mind the harsh realities of coaching.
“This is a business of relationships,” head coach Kevin Sumlin laments. “These kind of decisions have to be made for the whole organization.”
“It's difficult.”
Parting ways is always a hard thing to do.
It's what seventeen seniors did with Kyle Field on Thanksgiving. They were hoping for a better sendoff than the controversial one that occurred to close the LSU game.
They walked off hallowed ground when it was over, feeling like nothing was finished. They felt things were left undone on the field.
In reality, they do have unfinished business. A bowl game. If they win it they'll become the first Aggie senior class to post a victory in four straight postseason games.
“It can be a legacy,” says Sumlin. “There's a lot for us to play for.”
What does it all add up to?
The same thing it has all season.
The Aggies did improve. They did show a response, and some fight, after those dreadful three weeks in October. They defeated Auburn on the road, and despite the troubles in the Missouri and LSU games they nearly got those Tigers too.
But their league, and division, never changed.
It was still the SEC, but more importantly, the West.
Understand this fact when it comes to the 2014 Aggie season. There are 128 teams in the FBS, and only four played every conference game against a bowl eligible team. That foursome is Texas A&M, Alabama, Auburn and Arkansas. Now ask yourself which conference, and side of said conference, are those teams in?
The Aggies went through the most rugged division in college football history with youth. And they did improve. This league doesn't always allow that to show in the win column though.
There's plenty to build on. And, as Sumlin always says, the bowl game 'is the first game of the next season.'
The future is now.
It's time to get started.