After an old army farmer’s fight, the Aggie faithful can breathe once more. Rowdy up the gang and get a victory yell going. We have a lot to be excited about.
I could talk about the six turnovers, the missed opportunities or the five penalties for 55 yards, but I wont.
Aggies everywhere deserved to go crazy after a victory like that. And Sumlin and the players did exactly that as the 12th Man TV video showed from the locker room Saturday night. Enthusiastic fan Samuel Austin Smith rightfully said on Facebook that he couldn’t see previous coaches getting that excited.
“For some reason I can never imagine Mike Sherman or Dennis Franchione having ever done this, Smith said.
In a new season in a new conference with a new coach, this is a new team. Not only did we overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles, we won a furiously close game on the road in a fashion I haven’t seen in all my time at A&M.
I’m not saying we’re perfect or even close to it we played a horrible game and beat a team we were supposed to beat but for once we didn’t drop a necessary win.
Sumlin has changed the aura of A&M football and said it’s all about closing games out and fighting until the end.
“For [the players] to not quit and continue to play was huge,” Sumlin said. “For a team to have us down like that, for our football team to respond the way they did on the road in an SEC game, it was huge for our team.”
As I try to contain the emotional high that I get from replaying the highlights of the game in my head, let’s look at what this game means. We said we would BTHO the SEC and that’s exactly what we’re gonna do to ’em, Ags.
The SEC is known for the grind of its season. LSU losing to Florida, Georgia taking a beating from South Carolina and Arkansas taking control of Auburn are all examples of this from this weekend alone. Week in and week out, a team must put forth its best performance and, although it was a sloppy one, the Aggies still added another W to the win column and climbed into the top-25 rankings. Now A&M stands behind only unbeaten Alabama and Mississippi State in the SEC West.
The A&M defense has a big part to do with that success, as they seem to always come through at the right time this season. Junior defensive back Tony Hurd Jr.’s late interception to close the game was direct proof of this, and it all goes back to the mentality Sumlin and his staff has engrained into the minds of the players.
Senior linebacker Johnathon Stewart displayed this by saying no matter how long they were on the field or how the offense played, the defense had to do their job.
“The whole game we were fighting,” Stewart said. “[The offense] was turning over the ball but defensively we didn’t care. If we go out and stop the other team turnovers will be insignificant.”
This team is ready for the SEC and its time for the fans to join. We have to live up to the Aggie faithful name, no matter how bad we’ve been disappointed in the past. This is a new and improved team. Thanks and Gig ’em.