Howdy and welcome back to Fun With Numbers. We’re here to talk about what advanced stats say about the Fightin’ Texas Aggie Football squad—while remembering the two most fun numbers of all.
6 and 0, baby.
How’d We Do Last Week?
Just your casual 17-point win over an SEC opponent—putting up more points than they’d given up all season—while holding the opposition to just 17 total points, and doing all that while basically sitting on the ball in the 4th quarter and daring them to make you give it up.
Your eyes didn’t deceive
you: the Aggies played this game pretty similarly to how a fellow Top-5 team, Miami, did, in terms of offensive and defensive success rates and explosiveness numbers—just in case you were having any doubts about how well Texas A&M is playing.
They have to sustain it, though, so let’s talk about the next one.
What Do We Know?
The first of a three-game road stretch begins this week for the Aggies as they travel to Fayetteville to face an Arkansas squad that’s looking to break a four-game losing streak under interim head coach Bobby Petrino.
What a sentence.
The Hogs managed to play Tennessee and Ole Miss close this season, but got absolutely embarrassed at home by Notre Dame—which prompted the removal of Sam Pittman from the head coach’s desk. Vegas has the Aggies as a 7.5-point favorite, SP+ predicts a 9-point Aggie win, and FEI thinks it’s more like an 11-point margin. Let’s take a closer look.
Aggie Offense vs Razorback Defense
I get it if you’re an Aggie fan and you’ve gone full dogstaringatcupcakes.gif hearing the news that LeVeon Moss is going to miss significant time in a season when the Aggie offense is clicking really well. I’d say that Moss is going to be missed tremendously, his YAC and burst at the second level, and his completeness as a back are why he’s the #1 guy on a depth chart full of talented and experienced guys. But, at no point (even at its best) was the 2024 Aggie Offense working quite like this one is. And I would also say most of the late season losses from that season could be pinned on the defense. So until proven otherwise, let’s assume that this offense will look similar to what it has for most of the season, moving the ball effectively enough on the ground, and efficient and explosive through the air.
The Arkansas defense is not one that I would predict to be able to slow the Aggies down. They’ve given up 30 points in every one of their 4 losses and statistically speaking they’re much closer to UTSA’s defense than they are any of the SEC defenses the Aggies have faced thus far. Now to be fair to the Hogs, they have been on a streak of playing Top 15 OSP+ offenses, even the Memphis squad they faced earlier this year is rated 7th, but they’ve definitely been the weak link on this squad.
Aggie Defense vs Razorback Offense
On the other side of things, Elko’s defense has really come along in the last few weeks. The issues with explosive runs continue to pop up from time to time, and they’re not particularly good at keeping teams out of the end zone if they drive down the field (124th in Points/Opportunity, 117th in Red Zone Scoring Defense). That said, there are few defensive fronts playing as well as this team is right now, and it’s probably the best complete effort we’ve seen from an Aggie secondary in many years.
They’ll face what could be their toughest test of the season, a Petrino called offense led by Senior QB Taylen Green who elevates the entire offense with his legs (second on the team in rushing yards with 504). They’re just really efficient as a whole, and guys like O’Mega Blake (1.175 EPA/Catch, 18.79 Air Yards/Catch, All SEC Name) and Jalen Brown (.847 EPA/Catch, 27.22 Air Yards/Catch) provide explosive threats downfield. It’s going to be a real test of how much progress this secondary has made and whether this Front 7 is ready to tackle well in space.
So What’s the Verdict?
I’d be a lot more concerned if this team had performed badly on the road in South Bend, but the offense traveled well and the defense has only gotten better since that Week 3 matchup.
Losing Moss hurts, but this team is still more than capable of moving the ball against a really, really bad Razorback defense. From there, it’s a question of whether this defense can show up like Notre Dame’s did—or if they’ll allow the Hogs to hang around like Ole Miss and Tennessee.
There’s some comfort in knowing that even though Green has made progress, he still tends to set his own team back by running into sacks and giving the ball away (nine sacks in the last three games, three INTs, and two fumbles against Tennessee). I love the confidence this Aggie defense is playing with right now, and while I think this is a tough offense to stop, Elko has proven to be really adept at doing just that.
My Prediction: It’s not a Notre Dame blowout. I think it’s close in the first half before the Aggie defense shuts them down in the second and puts it away, 34–20.
Final Notes
Thanks for coming back this week, we’ll see you next week to talk about the Tigers (the LSU variety)
- Bcftoys.com for Brian Fremeau’s FEI data and other fun projects from him.
- ESPN.com is the home for all of Bill Connelly’s SP+ info (as well as the FPI rankings). You’ll need to subscribe to ESPN+ for most of his stuff these days.
- CollegeFootballData.com is a great site for data and charts that you can download and play with on your own time, in case Fun With Numbers isn’t filling that statistical void in your life. Most of my data comes from here.
- And finally my blog can be found here, in case you’re not getting enough of my writing.
