Thanks to an idle week of conference-wide shakeups, No. 15 Texas A&M football maintains control of its destiny in its quest for its first-ever bid in the SEC Championship game. Winning out is the name of the game for the Aggies to reach Atlanta, and it all starts with a Saturday evening matchup against New Mexico State under the lights of Kyle Field.
Like A&M, New Mexico State dons the “Aggie” moniker for its team and students, although A&M was founded 12 years before NMSU in 1876.
But in a contest full of narratives, perhaps the biggest of them all is how the Maroon and White run game will respond to the loss of junior running back Le’Veon Moss. The Louisiana native became the team’s heartbeat, accounting for a team-high 765 yards and 10 touchdowns until a lower leg injury versus South Carolina sidelined the breakout star for the remainder of the season.
A&M will now have to rely on a depleted running back room that has seen two of their four scholarship running backs go down with injuries throughout the 2024 campaign. Junior RB Amari Daniels is poised to take on the RB1 role with Moss absent, sporting a team second-best 466 yards and six touchdowns this season.
Graduate RB EJ Smith IV will be next in command behind Daniels, who has contributed in small amounts as the third-down back for the Aggies. However, with only 26 yards against Missouri as his season best, Smith will have to muster up his best in the waning weeks of the season to make an all-too-necessary impact on the A&M rushing attack.
New Mexico State also relies heavily on the run, accounting for 1,690 yards this season. Junior RB Seth McGowan leads the charge for the New Mexico State attack with a team-leading 636 yards and three touchdowns. Junior RB Mike Washington is leading the running back crew in touchdowns this year and creates a one-two punch alongside McGowan with 536 yards and six scores.
Despite lofty numbers of production, the dynamic duo of McGowan and Washington will have their work cut out for them as they are set to face one of the premier defensive lines in the country. A spoil of options to get the job done is an A&M luxury — none more intimidating than junior defensive end Nic Scourton.
Scourton ranks 10th in FBS for tackles for loss with 12.5 and has registered five sacks this season. The local kid from Bryan has solidified himself as one of the best defensive linemen in the country, having been named a semifinalist for the Lombardi Award earlier this month.
More of an unsung hero is junior nose tackle Albert Regis, who has been quietly anchoring a stout Aggie line with 23 tackles this season. Regis’s command of the trenches as a down-and-dirty player aids the rest of the Wrecking Crew in plugging the run and creating opportunities to sack the quarterback. Look out for Big Al.
New Mexico State’s defense, though, is more an Achilles heel than anything else. Sitting in the bottom 10 in the country, New Mexico State is giving up an average of 37.11 points per game and will be facing a prolific dual-threat quarterback in redshirt freshman Marcel Reed. Either through the air or on the ground, Reed will look to make life miserable for a team that lies flat on the bottom of Conference USA.
Senior DE Kale Edwards is about the only bright spot on an otherwise lackluster roster, registering four of New Mexico State’s 11 sacks this season. Edwards will be in for an uphill battle, as junior left tackle Trey Zuhn III will be quite the mountain to move. If sophomore left guard Chase Bisontis can make a comeback this week on Zuhn’s side, a consistently clean pocket may be imminent for A&M.
A&M finds itself in a comfortable position just outside the College Football Playoff, with just a couple of signature wins away from solidifying itself in the postseason. But before any attempts to tame the last of the SEC Tigers or saw some horns off, A&M must take care of business against an ailing New Mexico State team and prove it is up to any challenge.
New Mexico State will aim to be a hiccup in A&M’s SEC reign of terror, but when the team is clearly outmatched on both sides of the ball and favored to lose by 40 points, perhaps ESPN Analytics’ giving New Mexico State 1 in 100 odds to win the game is just about right.
