Kyle Field was filled with red, white and blue as the Texas A&M football team downed the Oklahoma State Cowboys 21-7 Saturday. However, head football coach R. C. Slocum already was seeing red days before the game.
Slocum was upset that his defense was not living up to the “Wrecking Crew” title, and he let his team know about it in practice.
With Slocum challenging them, members of the Crew were out to prove themselves against Oklahoma State, and there was little that the Cowboy offense could do to stop them.
“I think that we played with more intensity, and when you play hard, you should make plays,” Slocum said. “The defense just turned up its level of intensity and played with great effort.”
The Aggie defense only gave up a total of 199 yards on the day and managed to sack Cowboy quarterback Aso Pogi five times.
“We had to go out there and say ‘Hey, we’re the Wrecking Crew. We have the name, and we have to live by it.’ And I think we did that today,” said linebacker Christian Rodriguez.
On the Cowboys’ second possession, OSU coach Les Miles decided to catch A&M off guard by faking a punt on fourth-and-14 from his team’s own 25- yard line. Punter Scott Elder was able to find a hole to run through, but Jay Brooks was able to make an open-field tackle and stop Elder for only a 6-yard gain.
“We knew we were going to fake a punt,” Miles said. “I felt like it was wide open on each of those plays, but they were able to chase us down.”
The Aggies were able to take advantage of the short field, driving the ball 31 yards in six plays to get on the scoreboard first.
Running back Keith Joseph capped the drive with a two-yard touchdown run with 4:36 left in the first quarter.
Joseph left the game in the second quarter because of pain in a shoulder he had injured earlier this week. Joseph ended the game with only seven yards on eight carries.
After Joseph left the game, sophomore Oschlor Flemming took over the bulk of A&M’s rushing attempts, carrying the ball 16 times for 71 yards.
The Cowboys were able to get their first break in the game with seven minutes left before halftime on a Terrance Robinson interception. Robinson ran under the ball after it was tipped up by junior tightend Michael de la Torre and returned the ball 16 yards to the A&M 10-yard line.
It only took the Cowboys one play to tie the ball game, as running back Tatum Bell took the toss from Pogi and ran to the corner of the end zone for a 10-yard touchdown.
Bell was OSU’s leading rusher for the game with 94 yards on 22 carries.
In the third quarter, A&M’s defense came through again by stopping OSU on fourth-and-one at A&M’s 26. Miles put defensive back Chris Massey in at quarterback for the play to run the option but Massey was unable to turn the corner and Terrence Kiel tackled him for a 6-yard loss.
Following that stop, junior quarterback Mark Farris had his best drive of the day, taking the Aggies 68 yards in six plays for a touchdown. Farris completed four of four passes for 45 yards on the drive. He finished with 92 yards on the day.
The touchdown came on a 19-yard pass to sophomore wide receiver Jamaar Taylor.
“I ran that same play earlier on in the game and it was clogged (up in the middle),” Taylor said. “I saw that one of my blockers kind of held up a guy, so I busted it outside, and it pretty much was a walk-in.”
Taylor led the Aggies with 36 yards on four receptions and a touchdown.
The Aggies sealed the game up less than five minutes later when senior safety Wes Bautovich blocked a Cowboy punt in the end zone and freshman Eric Crutchfield recovered it for the touchdown.
The Wrecking Crew shut down the Cowboys from there, and the offense started pounding the ball between the tackles with freshman Derek Farmer to run the clock.
The Aggies will continue the three-game homestand on Saturday when the Notre Dame Fighting Irish visit Kyle Field.