Football Falls at No. 2 Alabama

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) -- Mac Jones passed for a career-high 435 yards and four touchdowns, including a pair of deep throws to John Metchie III and an even longer one to Jaylen Waddle, and No. 2 Alabama defeated No. 13 Texas A&M 52-24 on Saturday.

Briefly threatened early, Jones and the Crimson Tide (2-0) flexed their considerable big-play muscle in the passing game to put away the Aggies (1-1). A sign of things to come: His first attempt went 78 yards to Metchie, `Bama's latest major receiving threat.

Jones topped that with an 87-yard TD to Waddle, who had sprinted past two Aggies defenders to make the grab with nothing but green in between himself and the end zone. Metchie and Jones hooked up for a 63-yarder in the fourth, giving the sophomore five catches for 181 yards.

Jones finished 19-of-26 passing for a second straight surgically precise performance marred by one interception off a deflection. Waddle had 142 yards receiving and his touchdown catch was tied for the fifth longest in program history.

It came after three Alabama penalties in four plays. Jones' three career pass touchdowns of 85-plus yards are the most by a Tide quarterback.

Najee Harris rushed for two short touchdowns and safety Daniel Wright scored on a 47-yard interception return against Kellen Mond.

Mond put up big numbers but it wasn't nearly enough. He completed 25 of 44 passes for 318 yards with three touchdowns -- and the pick six. Ainias Smith had six catches for 123 yards and two touchdowns.

Postgame Notes (Team)

• The Aggies tallied 450 yards of total offense against Alabama, the most for the team in an SEC game since the South Carolina game last season.
• Graduate student Ryan Renick’s touchdown early in the second quarter was the team’s first one-play scoring drive in league play since the Ole Miss game in 2018 and the second in SEC play in the Jimbo Fisher era.
• Today’s captains against Alabama were S Keldrick Carper, DL Micheal Clemons and OL Carson Green.

Postgame Notes (Individual)

• Senior QB Kellen Mond joined Johnny Manziel as the only quarterbacks in A&M history to tally over 9,000 yards of total offense in their careers as he upped his total to 9,307 yards at Alabama.
• Mond matched his regulation career high in single-game passing touchdowns with three against the Crimson Tide. The only time he has thrown more than three touchdown passes in a game was the seven-overtime win over LSU in 2018.
• Mond finished the game with 318 passing yards, throwing for over 300 yards for the sixth time in his career.
• Sophomore RB Ainias Smith went back to his wide receiver roots against Alabama, finishing the game with 123 receiving yards and a pair of touchdown catches. This was the first 100-yard game of his career, as well as his first multi-touchdown game.
• Smith’s 47-yard touchdown catch in the second quarter to put A&M on the board was the longest play of his young career.
• Graduate student TE Ryan Renick capitalized on an interception return by sophomore DE DeMarvin Leal and took a 17-yard pass from Kellen Mond into the end zone for the first touchdown of his A&M career.
• Sophomore TE Jalen Wydermyer finished the game with career highs in receptions (8) and receiving yards (82).
• Junior DE Tyree Johnson batted a pass on Alabama’s first play of the second quarter that landed in the hands of sophomore DE DeMarvin Leal, who returned it 23 yards and set up a game-tying touchdown. This was the second career breakup for Johnson and the first career interception for Leal.
• Senior LB Buddy Johnson led the defense for the second straight game, making eight tackles. Sophomore LB Andre White Jr., was just behind him with a career-high six takedowns.
• Junior PK Seth Small sailed a 29-yard field goal through the uprights and became the eighth player in program history to make 40-plus career field goals.

Notes from Jimbo Fisher's Press Conference:

• Congratulations to Alabama. They have a very good football team.
• We needed to match some scores, had opportunities to do it. Moved the football well, didn't match some things. Had a couple critical drops and a missed protection or two. Had some opportunities. Missed a field goal that we needed to make.
• Big thing on offense, they did a great job of hitting big plays. They did a real good job of hitting that backed up in situations. We’ve got to get that fixed and we’ll continue to work on that.
• We’ve got to stop the big plays, learn to be more efficient on offense and take advantage of some of those opportunities to be able to play and compete. But we had some opportunities.
• Again, disappointed we didn't do it but there's still a lot to work with some of our young guys.
• If we can make some improvements here coming up we have a chance to have a good football team.
• (defensive backs play) Not only the DBs, but also their offensive line gives them time to run those double moves, a lot of it was some double moves in there that were ran. Protection has a part of it too. Got to go back and look, evaluate what we were doing. We bracketed some of those guys, tried to bracket Waddle at times. Went one-on-one and they had to pick and choose and they found the one-on-one matchups and were able to get to the balls over the top. Looking at evaluating and working on it and working on trying to get some pressure and different things we’ve got to do. We’ll evelaute on the film. Don’t want to comment until I watch the film.
• (amount of teaching that can come from this game) Really good, especially not only defensive but offensively, because we had some opportunity to keep matching scores. Had a series there where our skill guys were missing signals, just got confused on signals, had to use a couple timeouts. And the big opportunity, came back from 14 down to 14-14, we have a chance there we have a third down protection we just get pressured on we get pushed back and then we get locked in. They throw the pick, we have another protection issue we don't slot out on the guard, they bring a corner, we get that but we’ve got to protect the end. Kellen gets hit in the face, but still any turnover there is still always on the quarterback. But if we have that we have the corner route. Then they score but we come right back down and a big play in game if we got the fourth down. If we can hold on to that football on that option route right before half, we're going in for a field goal or touchdown to make it 28-17, 28-21 and have momentum coming back. Our kids were resilient about competing and coming back. We've just got to take advantage of opportunities. When you get in those games it’s how every play can matter because you're right there to score another 20 points in the game, got to take advantage of that. Can't miss the field goals, but we cannot give up the big plays on defense in what we do.??
• (difference in passing game tonight, spreading out catches, and O-line protection) Think we were better. Last week we had two turnovers, think you would have saw some of that you just didn't see the opportunities to do it, because we had the turnovers and the number of plays which we got. We converted third downs, I believe we were 10-of-17 on the night. Guys had some opportunity to catch balls and they did a good job. And we're getting better. Couple things, on some pressures we had some deep balls where we had a chance a couple times, but we had to flush it out and throw it away. If we could have held just a hair more, but then they're very, very good team. I think that was one of the keys tonight too, they could hold it that extra second, second and a half to launch it. We’ve got to find that extra second sometimes to get it Just a little farther down field, and we had some chances today.??