Close don’t cut it

I’m still angry about Saturday’s loss at South Carolina. Texas A&M dominated much of that game, but the Aggies’ penchant for self-sabotage got the better of them.

Do you know how inept you have to be to pick up 457 yards, not turn the ball over and still lose? It’s hard to say, because it has never been done before Saturday.

The offensive line is starting to show what we were hoping for before the season started. They best up on South Carolina’s defensive front with the running game. So of course, they go to a finesse game inside the 10. That still bothers me.

If you don’t trust Marcel Reed to run the offense in an aggressive fashion for the rest of the field, why are you passing down close — especially on first down?

Reed had his best game of the year. But he took a bad sack that immediately became a touchdown for South Carolina and threw two passes out of bounds, giving his receiver and team no chance of making the game-tying score.

450 yards of offense should win you a game. Holding your opponent to 17 points should win. Holding South Carolina’s running backs to 75 yards on 21 carries should be enough to win. Instead, they find a way to let LaNorris Sellers, who was running on one leg, break free for a 41-yard touchdown run for the final score of the game. They gave up three plays of 25 yards or more the entire game. One was a touchdown and another led to a touchdown. You focus on cutting down explosive plays, you do it, force a turnover after one and the other two kill you.

It’s appropriate for this team. I give Mike Elko all the credit in the world because this team has not quit and they’ve been close the last two games – but who gives a crap about close? Nobody.

A&M had 26 first downs and only one three and out the entire game. That’s very positive. Reuben Owens’ explosion was also very positive. No tuchdowns. That’s awful.

The Aggies racked up a couple of sacks Saturday. They forced a turnover, so they now have more than they did all of last year. They didn’t give up a run of more than 11 yards – until they did.

Last year the buzzword around the team was “finish”. Then, it meant finish the season strong. This year, it’s a lot more simple: how about finishing a bleeping game?

THe future is now (at defensive end)

One thing that was a positive out of the game Saturday was the fact that the two sacks A&M had were delivered by Marco Jones and Bryce Perry-Wright. In other words, the future.

Jones has started to get on a bit of a roll, with sacks in each of the last two games. Perry-Wright has started to take on more playing time because he’s earned it. He was one of the best defensive ends in the country this weekend according to our old friends at PFF, with a 91.7 overall score.

Jones and Perry-Wright have the size to be three-down defensive ends for more than one series at a time. Perry-Wright, especially, was tough against the run Saturday. He’s probably going to create a whole lot of headaches for opponents as he gets stronger, which he surely will. The lack of a pass rush this year has really been a problem, but they’ve at least shown signs of life lately. And the only upperclassman who has applied much pressure anyway is TJ Searcy.

Safety in numbers

Something that I noticed after the fact was that the Aggies played essentially this entire game with three safeties on the field at all times. Sometimes they did it with a three-man front, but most of the time it was a four-man front with no nickel. That’s a smart move against a run-heavy team and we could see more of it again in this upcoming game against Tennessee. At the very least, it got some of A&M’s most talented players on the field. But, they still didn’t cover Brady Hunt on one of the game’s biggest plays.

All the same, I’d rather have three safeties out there than the nickel play the Aggies have had most of the year. That position groups has been one of the biggest disappointments on the team.

I’m sorry, it’s still fun

When the Aggies are terrible, I look for amusement elsewhere. Right now, my ol’ buddy Lane Kiffin is delivering.

Remember, this guy got a massive contract has (allegedly) the highest-paid team in the nation and he’s looking a four-loss season squarely in the face with Texas and Tennessee still coming to town. And it’s great to see the smugness get wiped off his face.

This is a guy who has made the Tiger Walk into some kind of celebrity thirst trap. This week, he was tailed into Tiger Stadium by Shaq, Paul Skenes, Livvy Dunne and Kevin Costner.

KEVIN COSTNER?

And then Alabama ran them out of their own stadium, a la A&M last year, 31-13. In other words, A&M, for all its problems, gave the Crimson Tide a better game in Tuscaloosa than LSU did at home.

It was bad enough that ABC’s boom mic caught someone yelling, “Hey, Lane – f**k you!” in the fourth quarter.

Now, to be fair, that could have been anyone. It could have been a frustrated LSU fan, who saw Kiffin arrogantly put the program squarely in the crosshairs of the SEC’s gunsights; it could have been th Alabama fan enjoying the peace and quiet of a Death Valley rout. It could have been the SEC itself, having a nice moment of enjoyment at their nemesis’ expense.

Whichever way it was, it doesn’t seem like things go well when coaches intentionally draw attention to themselves. We learned that with Jimbo, Colorado is learning it with Coach Prime and now LSU gets a dose of the Lane Kiffin Experience, which is on an entirely different level from any other coach in America.

The arrogance, the smugness, the big fist pumps and the celebrity strolls are great when you’re winning big. LSU is not. So instead, it looks tonedeaf and like Kiffin’s just all about himself and what this job can bring him.

Which, of course, is 100% the case.

No, Greg, that’s not it

SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey made a stupid, and completely unforced, error today. He did something that is unforgivable to fans of the conference: he defended the officials.

That’s a no-no. That’s especially true after the officials on the field and in the Birmingham review center absolutely butchered the Missouri-Texas game, with all the calls going the same way – to Texas. And some of them weren’t even close. It was bad enough that announcers Joe Tessitore and Jesse Palmer made mention of how bad a day the crew was having.

That criticism, apparently, was far, far worse than what the refs were doing on the field.

“Some of the worst officials in America are those in the announce booth. We have officiating experts who I turned on a game on Saturday, who was just flat wrong. And what that creates is this narrative that we’ve done something wrong, and that is unacceptable to me, and we have to address that,” he said today on Paul Finebaum’s show.

Well, commissioner, here’s the problem: they’re right and you’re wrong. The SEC has an officiating problem. Its officials stink in both football and basketball, and now it looks like the guys handling replay aren’t very good either. And if you have a problem with criticism from ESPN, maybe you shouldn’t have massive deals with thim (which, of course, they should).

But this is, to me, a case of thou protesteth too much. Sankey’s being critical of Tessitore, Palmer and other ESPN/ABC announcers because it’s easier than addressing the more pressing issue of official incompetence. Maybe he doesn’t see it or maybe he doesn’t want to see it, but other people do. And, at some point, people will stop taking the SEC seriously and question its credibility. That possibility would concern me a whole lot more than Jesse Palmer rightly saying Missouri fans had reason to be livid at all the calls going the other way.

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