Homecoming
After a loss to Mississippi State and a month spent playing on the road, the Aggies return home Saturday to play No. 3 Ole Miss in front of the 12th Man.
“It’ll be good for us to be back at Kyle Field,” head coach Kevin Sumlin said. “This will be our fourth SEC football game, it’ll be our first one at home, something I think will draw a lot of energy — from being at home and also from our fans, ‘cause we’ve had great support on the road. We’ve had great support in Dallas, and we’ve had great support for our home games that we’ve had here. For us, I don’t think being back home could come at a better time, and I think our guys are anxious to get back out on the field and prove who they are.”
Saturday sellout
Monday, the football team announced via social media that Saturday’s game is sold out, with only standing room tickets still available.
“Everybody was looking at Twitter yesterday and saw that the game is sold out,” quarterback Kenny Hill said. “Everybody was going nuts. We’re excited to be back in front of the home crowd.”
The game has the potential to set an all-time attendance record at the newly renovated Kyle Field. The current record was set in A&M’s first home game of the season against Lamar at 104,728.
Using the check-down
Offensive coordinator Jake Spavital said it is important in the A&M offense to take easy completions when available, specifically the check-down to the running back when no wide receiver is open.
“I do think Kenny does need to get down to those check-downs a lot,” Spavital said. “We do emphasize that, but that’s one of the things that’s very hard on a quarterback. A lot of quarterbacks don’t utilize that check-down enough. Obviously I think he’s going to have a learning experience from this and utilize his check-downs more, but that definitely is important with teams that drop deep into coverage, drop eight into coverage or just try to match our routes and run with them, so we’ve definitely got to get better at checking it down to our running backs.”
Same song and dance
Defensive coordinator Mark Snyder said Ole Miss will present similar challenges on offense as its in-state counterpart did over the weekend, with big wide receivers and the threat of the quarterback run, but Snyder said Ole Miss quarterback Bo Wallace isn’t as much of a threat on the ground as Mississippi State’s Dak Prescott. “They’re not quite as much play-action pass-[oriented] as we just faced,” Snyder said. “They’re not running the quarterback quite as much as Dak. To come out of there with three or four sacks against the team we just played is a pretty good day because of the ability of the quarterback to run. It’s hard to pressure a guy who can run the football from the quarterback position.”