COLLEGE STATION, Texas—The vibe has changed around Texas A&M.
Players and coaches said the team bonded and had its best practice week of the season leading up to the Oct. 18 game against Texas Tech. A&M lost 43-25, but the new sense of unity stayed intact.
The togetherness carried over to last week’s game against Iowa State, and the Aggies won 49-35, giving Coach Mike Sherman his first win in the Big 12. The Aggies (3-5, 1-3 Big 12) can take another step forward this Saturday, when they face Colorado (4-4, 1-3) at Kyle Field.
“For us to have that win under our belt, we now have some fuel for our train,” said freshman safety Trent Hunter, A&M’s third leading tackler.
Hunter admitted this week that the Aggies were a splintered group at the start of the season, with many players uncommitted to team goals and acting selfishly. Now, he said, everyone seems focused on helping Sherman restore the program.
“There’s a feeling of a team in the air,” Hunter said. “It was Coach Sherman. He came in and he was talking about being passionate and playing for your brothers. That whole team aspect, it’s starting to come around now.
“Right around Game 3 or Game 4, people started to buy in, one by one, little by little,” he said. “That Tech week, that’s when the big change (happened). You could really see it in the locker room. There were guys going around hugging everybody, (saying) ‘Let’s go, let’s play.’ There’s a lot of excitement everywhere.”
Sherman sensed that the victory in Iowa added to the positive momentum.
“I do think we came home a more confident team,” he said. “I hope it plays out well this week.”
The Buffaloes, meanwhile, had some soul-searching to do after getting hammered 58-0 at Missouri last Saturday.
After a promising 3-0 start, the Buffaloes have dropped four of their last five games and rank last in the Big 12 in virtually every major offensive category. In a seemingly desperate move, Coach Dan Hawkins took the redshirt off quarterback Tyler Hansen two weeks ago and had him splitting snaps with his son, Cody Hawkins.
Missouri shut down both quarterbacks, holding them to 158 combined passing yards and sacking each of them twice. The Buffaloes mustered only 199 total yards and come into Saturday’s game ranked 101st in total offense (301.63 yards per game) and 104th in scoring (18.63 points per game).
Coach Hawkins has tried to keep morale up by portraying the season as a journey and not letting the players dwell on the low points along the way.
“You’re always talking about where you’re going and where you are, what you have to do to get there,” he said. “Very few times are we spending time going, ‘Gosh, aren’t we great?’ or, ‘Gosh, aren’t we miserable?’ That’s just not the focus of the program.”
The good news for the Buffaloes this week is that they’ll match up with a defense that’s struggled as much as their offense.
The Aggies have given up 44.5 points in four conference games and come in with the nation’s 103rd ranked defense (431.5 yards per game). Sure, A&M has faced Texas Tech and Oklahoma State, two of the nation’s highest scoring teams. But the Aggies gave up 574 yards last week to Iowa State, the Big 12’s second-worst offense, ahead of only Colorado.
The defense is young and still inexperienced, with nine underclassmen on the depth chart, but Sherman is growing impatient with the unit’s development.
“It’s just a work in progress as I’ve said all year long. I hate to keep saying it, but it is,” Sherman said. “I think sometimes we get a little flustered when things go askew and we don’t respond sometimes as well as we should on the next play. To give a specific reason why we’re going to be this much better this week, I can’t give a you specific reason. We have to practice better, we have to understand what we’re trying to get done on defense better and move on from there.”
A&M’s offense, meanwhile, has hit its stride and found the right man to run it in Jerrod Johnson. The sophomore quarterback put up two of the top four passing performances in school history in October and needs only five more touchdown passes to reach 20 and set a single-season school record.
Sherman said senior Stephen McGee is close to returning after sitting out all but one play in five of the last six games with a nagging shoulder injury. But Johnson is the undisputed starter for now, after throwing for 381 yards and four touchdowns against the Cyclones.
“I think their quarterback is really getting better,” Coach Hawkins said. “They’re moving it, and obviously, primarily through the air. But I think they’re kind of finding their selves a little bit.”
