Aggies and Crimson Tide stand toe-to-toe in Texas-sized slugfest

As I was sitting in the Kyle Field bleachers on a sunny Saturday afternoon,  an instant classic broke out in the sweltering Texas heat. I extend my personal  thanks to the good folks at CBS for setting this game up in such a healthy, sauna-like environment, one in which I joyfully sweated out a good 10
pounds.

 In yet another testimony to the toughness of the average A&M football  fan, the line to the bathroom stretched from mid-field to the goal line five  minutes before halftime. It was even worse for the ladies, as their line  stretched clear around the end zone to the other team’s 20. A&M officials  encourage fans to bring a lot of water inside and then dare them to drink  it.

 As for what was taking place on the field, it was a football game that was  extremely well-played and nearly perfectly orchestrated by two superlative  college quarterbacks and their excellent coaching staffs, in miserable  conditions made specifically for TV.

 The Best in College  Football
 The two quarterbacks taking the snaps Saturday in College Station represented the best that college football has to offer, along with Oregon’s ‘Zone Read’  guy, Marcus Mariota, who was busy whipping up on Tennessee with his reads, arm  and legs.

 Mariota, Alabama’s AJ McCarron and the reigning Heisman winner, Johnny  Manziel, are total packages within the respective schemes, philosophies and  demands placed upon them by their football programs. You may consider each of the three effectively flawless and, by all means, unflappable, in any  situation.

 These three possess the intuitiveness, physical ability and leadership qualities to take each of their teams to the Promised Land. They are the three untouchables in today’s  fast paced, need-for-speed college game. Teddy Bridgewater, Braxton Miller, Tajh  Boyd and a handful of others, including several who also toil in the SEC, are  definitely dandy competitors and hard to beat by any standards. I know of no  college coach who would turn any of them away, but these three in particular are  quintessential examples of ideal quarterbacking specimens.

I would compare AJ to Andrew Luck; Marcus to RGIII, and Johnny to a perfect  blend of Barry Sanders and Joe Montana.

 The coaching staffs here at Kyle on Saturday were represented by an instant  Hall of Famer, Nick Saban, who has returned Alabama to its proper place in the  college football world. Kevin Sumlin is the No. 1 challenger for the title, with  possible objections heard loud and clear from good friends in my home state of  Louisiana.
 
  The difference in Saban, Sumlin, and LSU’s Les Miles is that two of them have  the unconditional support of their fan bases; whereas, the other cannot always  claim this as a certainty. We can all agree the Mad Hatter’s game management  acumen is certainly as entertaining as his results on the field, and he is  usually on the smiling end of a big game when it’s all said and done.  Nonetheless, with the tremendous strides of Mettenberger and the quick ascent of  the Fightin’ Tigers in the early season polls, there’s a triangle that has formed here in the awesome SEC West that cannot be denied. Ole Miss may even  make it a perfect square in the next two weeks.

 I’m not naïve enough to believe the axis of excellence will continue once the  Great Playmaker leaves College Station for much greener fields. Let’s be frank;  Johnny will be  drafted and may even go as the No. 1-overall choice, so let’s not be stupid, or  allow our stupidity to become public, anyway. You don’t put a brand new saddle  on a jackass, as my high school coach used to say, and Manziel is no  jackass.

 A Jacksonville team desperate for a star attraction to sell tickets cannot miss this opportunity in  2014. To say Johnny isn’t going pro is Australian for Naysayer, or, in other  words, delusional. So let’s store this away for another day, most likely  sometime in April. After all, this is college
football at its all-time  greatest. The first Game of the Century for the 2013 season may have exceeded  all pre-game hype – and it only gets better from here.

 And speaking of quarterbacks, the programs at LSU and Alabama don’t seem to be as dependent on theirs individually. They have illustrated a two to  three-year plug-in system that works very well in their systems. Manziel,  however, has made himself one of the most elite, indispensable players to play  any position in modern  times. He is the guy who could step into anyone’s offensive system and make it shine – even yours, Barry Switzer, should you  decide to refrain from choking him first.


There is a lot of football left to be played. As Johnny said after the game,  this was just one game;  it wasn’t the Super Bowl.  I agree wholeheartedly, although Johnny and his offense played as though it  was their Super Bowl.  Offensively we can assume all expectations for A&M were exceeded, yet we’d  be dead wrong.

Getting Defensive

 While Alabama gave up a ton of yards and several fourth-quarter touchdowns,  they’d already provided enough of a cushion to ride out the Aggies’ storm. They  did this by going to an unbalanced line in the second quarter on first down.  When the Tide came out of the huddle for the second play, again unbalanced,  A&M quickly called a time-out to get their front seven readjusted. It didn’t  matter.

 Alabama ran the tailback to their overloaded side time and time again,  knocking the Aggies’ defensive linemen two yards off the line of scrimmage. The  Aggies simply had no answer physically, and when you can’t go toe to toe, even  in this high-octane era, you cannot win. When the dust finally settles, it  usually settles in the trenches where it always has.

 Were the Aggies just not in ‘game-shape’ on defense because of the  suspensions? Yes, this is quite possible. The Ags up front were losing the  ‘bench press challenge’ to the offensive linemen of Alabama on every play. The  only way to get in game-shape is by playing in a few, just as the only way to  get proficient at a particular aspect of the game for a skill player is by  getting plenty of ‘game practice.’

 Aggie fans certainly hope their defense isn’t this inferior to the offensive side of the ball, because if this is truly the case,  without Johnny Heisman, this season could be much different. As it is, it’s very  frustrating for any quarterback to sit on the sidelines and watch his defense on  roller skates going backwards throughout the game.

 What Johnny did in the fourth quarter after cooling his jets for so long was  beyond awe-inspiring. He was a frenzied fanatic who appeared to be gasping for  his final breath. But upon seeing the bright light above, the never-say-die  Aggie QB fought with every fiber in his body to survive. If he was going to lose  to the world champions, it was going to by a split decision – certainly  not by a knockout.

The Dream Scheme

 To put a bow on it, A&M runs every quarterback’s dream  scheme - beautiful, it really is. One would think a quarterback  thought it up and then said, “Now watch what I can do!” Receive the snap five to six yards away from the fray, read your keys and deliver the football. Throw it  on a line, with touch or on an arc. It’s all so automatic. All the throws we see  from the Air Raid pocket have been thrown and completed hundreds of times in practice. Catch and throw. Catch and throw.

 Mariota calls the Aggie offense “backyard” football that even he would love  to run, but he’s too busy in Oregon perfecting other aspects of a complete  offense. Simply put, the Air Raid offense is God’s
gift to quarterbacks. Ask any quarterback from any era and see how  many would also say they wish they’d played in this offense. You either catch  the snap and throw, or you catch the snap and hand off. What could be easier?  Nothing. But can it win championships in this decade?

 The shotgun is much simpler than getting under the center, taking the snap  and busting your butt to get back into the pocket, planting your feet, getting  balanced, finding your bearings downfield amidst the defensive rush that tried  to beat you back there, and delivering the football on time and with great  accuracy to any part of the field.

This is hard work. It requires a tremendous amount of focus, practice time  and proper technique. It’s something a lot of schools have decided is  detrimental to the development of their quarterback and system. The shotgun  formation has turned quarterbacks into baseball pitchers standing up there on a  mound.

Sometimes this single ability, or lack thereof, is the deciding factor for a  shotgun passer in his attempt to become a successful NFL quarterback. Many  “catch and throw” guys simply aren’t capable of attaining the same effectiveness  when converting to the traditional dropback used by the pros and by those of us  who played in darker ages.

Wherefore art thou, Zone  Read?

 Another realization that surfaced during this Clash of the Titans is the Air  Raid offense has no running game, per se. It must rely, instead, on true  greatness and elusiveness at the running back position. It has plays drawn up in  the playbook for running the ball, sure, but they’re successful more times than  not as a result of the skills of the ball carrier rather than the accompanying  blocking scheme. We saw this in A&M’s version Saturday against Alabama.  There wasn’t much there.

Even when A&M went to the Pistol with two tights in goal line and short  yardage situations, Alabama knew the zone read was coming and easily defended  it. Jordan Jefferson of LSU can attest to this. There just isn’t much to draw  from, and this is fine as long as you’re throwing for 450 yards and putting up  45 points per game from literally anywhere on the field.

Yet, this is exactly where Mariota and Oregon have the offensive edge in a  championship-type game such as the one played Saturday. The Ducks, in addition  to executing everything the Aggies run offensively, also run the Zone Read to  perfection. Johnny Manziel has only seen it on TV.

 It’s a killer running play similar to what the handoff read in the triple  option was for a very familiar football team in the ’70s. It isolates one  defender and makes him decide which potential ball carrier he is going to pursue, but in this case, the quarterback’s handoff read also determines the direction of the football. Unlike the Veer and the Wishbone that used only half  the field, the Zone Read requires the defense to defend the entire  football field. The running back may have the ball going one direction or the quarterback may have it  going the other. Good luck on that. The Aggies don’t run the Zone Read,  period.

 Wide Receivers: to the left, to  the left

A&M is also a wide receiver short on its left side. As we all know, the  Aggies like to go vertical and see what develops. Early in the game when Johnny  caught the snap from center and looked to his right with ‘Bama in its Cover 2,  he kept finding Evans gaining separation on the cornerback defending him deep.  Big plays were the result. When Johnny’s pre-snap reads took him to his left for  the throw, there was no separation developing with his wide receiver. This is  when the scrambling started, because it’s better to create while on the run  rather than throw up a hope pass that could easily get picked. It’s truly a  matter of six to eight inches that Johnny must see from 40 yards away; his mind  must then quickly say, “yes” or “no.”

 Without equal breakaway ability on both sides of the ball, the offense  suffered. Defensively for Alabama, their coaches changed personnel when A&M  had a deep-ball threat in Evans on its left side. This was successful for the  second and third quarters. Because of the lack of a deep threat on the other  side, the Aggies resorted to short stop routes by the wide receiver. Then they  successfully slipped their inside receiver behind the shallow-playing cornerback  on deep corner routes, beating the safety to the pylon.

 Aggie receivers know that Johnny is going to throw the long ball as deep as  is necessary and they’re not going to out-run his arm. Problems occur when they  haven’t beaten their man in a timely manner, and for the middle two quarters  they were indeed covered up.

 Final thoughts

 No running game, a defense that’s not in game shape and no break-away wide  receiver threat on the quarterback’s left side were the reasons A&M didn’t  take this ball game. A kickoff that sailed out of bounds when the Aggies had  regained the momentum was no help either. Perhaps an on-side kick would have  been in order here. And the pick in the end zone? You guessed it. A busted route  by a receiver who went straight upfield instead of fading wide to the sideline.  Then there was the non-call of pass interference on the Alabama pick-six the  Tide eventually would desperately need.

 Unfortunately, the long conference losing streak was extended for yet another  year inside Kyle. Not since 1998 have the Aggies gone undefeated at home in  conference play. (This was also the sixth straight loss against Top 10 opponents  in matchups scheduled within the first three games of a season, and the eighth  of 10 overall.) The Aggies held and quickly lost another double-digit lead at home, just as they did last season against SEC foes Florida and LSU. A&M has  never won the division or an outright conference title with a single home  conference loss since freshmen became eligible in 1972.

Even a highly experienced and much improved version of Johnny Football  couldn’t break the cycle. In spite of the blistering heat, A&M’s  balls-to-the-wall offense, and the fanatical, fantastic field general who was at  its helm, the cream of the crop in the SEC still refuses to wilt in the friendly  confines of Aggieland.

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