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Saturday January 2nd, 2010
12:29amAg Football Recap: Aggie Special Teams Lead to Georgia Victory, 44-20
Independence Stadium
After that sun went down the temp dropped from cold to C-O-L-DWe started our trip early on Monday morning as my brother, Sean, and my Dad swung by and picked me up at 7:30am. We headed up 59 towards Shreveport, stopped somewhere along the way (maybe Cleveland) for some What-a-burger bkft, and got to our hotel in Shreveport around 12:15ish.
The problem was that our hotel was not to be. The shmucks at the Ramada over booked and told us they had saved us a room at the Country Inn, "only five minutes down the road".
Hey, at least it has HBOI'm pretty sure that if we wanted to get some nasty disease from our bed we would have made the road trip to lubbock back in October. We didn't even get out of the car. Thankfully my old man was able to pull some strings and found a room at the Hilton down by the Riverwalk and all the Casinos. MUCH nicer.
Unknown to us, the Hilton was the Georgia team headquarters so when we walked it there was red and black everywhere. Our room wasn't going to be ready until 3pm-ish so we changed into our warmest clothes in the bathroom and on the way out saw a bulldog, an actual real life bulldog, getting onto the elevator. Remembering that Uga had just passed away I thought to myself, "Huh, those SEC fans are so hardcore. I wonder how many Aggies have Collies that travel with them?"
As it turned out, the dog we saw was actually Russ who is an older brother of Uga VII and was filling in for Uga.
Anyways, we got back into the car looking like sumo wrestlers with our 8 layers of clothes on and headed towards Bossier Pierre Mall where the shuttle was to take us to the game. Lesson Re-Learned: Don't ever ride the shuttle to the game unless you are sure it is a smooth operation. Getting to the stadium was no problem but afterward - WOW. We waited for over an hour and fifteen minutes to get onto a bus as the line wrapped about 4 city blocks long. We ran into a similar problem back in '06 after the Holiday bowl trying to catch the tram after the game - but we weren't able to navigate ourselves out of this one. And it was C-O-L-D.
In 20 years, if one was curious how the 2009 season went for Texas A&M, then they could plug this game into whatever totally sweet visual device that they're using in 2029 and watch this game because it was a microcosm of our season.
Sean & MeI thought that the defense came out and played a superb first half holding Georgia's offense to a total of 90 yards. Matt Moss really stood out to me as playing a whale of a first half. Our offense had better results, especially in the second quarter, but we still matched Georgia's 5 first half punts. We were able to strike first scoring on a 15 yard pass to Jamie McCoy in the endzone with 2:33 remaining in the half, which was really set up on a big 41 yard reception by freshman Brandal Jackson.
Unfortunately, that lead quickly evaporated as Georgia's Brandon Boykin returned the ensuing kick-off 81 yards for a TD (his third of the season).
That wasn't the beginning, or the end, of our special teams woes. It was, hands-down, the most pathetic showing I've ever witnessed from our special teams. Words can't describe it. We were really bad under Coach Fran but this is worse.
After the KO return we went 3-and-out and Ryan Epperson's punt was blocked and recovered by Georgia on our 2 yard line. One play later Georgia was up 14-7. A span of one Georgia offensive play and they scored 14 points.
We started our next drive at our own 25 yard line with 1:22 on the clock and the offense came out and moved the ball. Things ended badly, but on account of the officials. We got the ball down to Georgia's 20 yard line and on the first down the clocked stopped to move the chains and JJ snapped and spiked the ball with 2.8 seconds on the clock. The officials signaled the end of the half. There is no way that a spike took 2.8 seconds off the clock and after Cart taught everyone, including himself, in the Big 12 championship the clock stops when the ball hits the ground AND it can be reviewed to verify that. We saw the officials get it correct in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl keeping both teams on the field and reviewing the clock to make sure they got it right just before the half - and VT ended up with a chance at some points. Two snaps earlier we spiked the ball following them moving the chains and the clock went from 00:10 to 00:09....so how does it take more than double that the second time we do it?
By the end of the night, this didn't cost us the game, but at the time it was huge. Instead of being tied up 14-14 or at a minimum down 14-10 at the half we were denied the opportunity to stop or re-swing the momentum in our direction.
In summary of the "special" teams by the end of the night we...
Special teams cost us 24 points in a 44-20 loss. If you need me to do the math for you (**cough**tech fans**cough**) that was the difference in the ballgame. That is frustrating.
- ....had a field goal blocked (that cost us 3 points)
- ....fumbled a punt return (thankfully it went out of bounds and we retained possession)
- ....gave up the KO return (that cost us 7 points)
- ....had a punt blocked (that cost us 7 points)
- ....snapped a ball over the head of the punter (leading to a short, quick UGA TD - 7 points)
Georgia's offense finished with 44 points, their second highest output of the season, but the majority of that was a direct result of field position. They scored 28 points on TD drives of 30 yards or less and in all honesty, our defense held them in check until the end of the game when we started rotating the players more.
One thing that I thought really hurt us, just like they did up in Boulder, was our inability to get off the field on 3rd & Longs. They converted on 3rd & 8, 3rd & 13, 3rd & 10, 3rd & 9, & 3rd & 10 at various points of the game.
Throughout the game we saw a lot of Michael Hodges, Jonathan Stewart and Sean Porter playing at LB, trying to get additional speed onto the field.
QB Joe Cox threw for 158 yards and 2 TDs, AJ Green only had 57 yards on 6 receptions, and Washaun Ealey ran for 78 yards and Caleb King added 60 more.
Our offense put up 471 yards on Georgia, the most ever in Mark Richt's tenure. I didn't think that Jerrod had a particularly great night (compared to his performance against t.u.) but it was by no means a bad night. He threw for 362 yards and two TDs on 29-of-58 passing and ran for an additional 51 yards (for 413 yards of total offense). He set a myriad of A&M Bowl Records: Yards, completions, attempts, total offense (upping Bucky's legendary '90 Holiday Bowl performance by 91 yards)....he also tied the TD passing record.
He threw two INTs, one of which was a bad one that was returned to our 28 and led to an easy TD but the other was on 4th down and was just as good, if not better, than one of our punt attempts.
Christine Michael ran for 77 yards on 15 carries including a TD while Cyrus Gray only had 3 carries. C-Mike is going to be a complete star.
Jeff Fuller led our receivers, tying the A&M bowl record, with 7 receptions for 102 yards. Howard Morrow finished his career with 5 for 65 including our final TD.
One thing that I think did hurt us offensively was the inability to run any play-action. Jerrod did a spectacular job of moving around to complete passes because Georgia's DL was visibly better than our offensive line and JJ had a ton of pressure on him. We didn't have enough time before their DL got through our OL to run any PA.
After the game we encountered the bus/shuttle melee and when we finally got back to the car at the mall we were starving. There was a Chili's right across the street so we headed there and after being told there was a 25 minute wait - we were seated in about 4 minutes. In hindsight they seated us so we wouldn't leave. It took over 50 minutes from when we ordered for our chicken tacos and chicken tenders to arrive at the table. After that we got back to the Georgia hotel and crashed.
I think it is safe to say that the city of Shreveport is not physically capable of handling thirty or forty thousand visitors.
Tuesday morning we loaded up early and headed back home. We celebrated as we crossed the state line.
My record >100 miles from CS 03 Nebraska L -36 04 Cotton Bowl L -31 06 Army W +4 06 Holiday Bowl L -35 07 Miami L -17 07 Nebraska W +22 08 New Mexico W +6 09 Arkansas L -28 09 Colorado L -1 09 Oklahoma L -55 09 Independence Bowl L -24This game was my 81st overall Aggie game and my 17th game away from Kyle Field. Disregarding the games I've been to in Waco and Austin (in which we are 3-3) our record is 3-8 (victories '06 Army, '07 Nebraska, & '08 New Mexico) and only once in those 8 losses was it by less than the '07 Miami game's 17 point margin. Basically, we get crushed regularly when I travel.
I'd like to say it was a fun trip, and it was fun getting to screw around with my dad and brother, but there was a lot of suckage to go with it....I'd still do it again.
I'll try to get my season recap up soon and hopefully we'll have a new defensive coordinator (and possibly a new defensive staff) to discuss by then.
Wednesday December 30th, 2009
10:28pmtexas tech Fires Mike Leach
Hands down the best news of the bowl season.
In quasi-related news, Aggie defensive coordinator, Joe Kines, has retired. I have no clue who will be taking his place and I'm sure it will be discussed at length at some point soon. I'll get more into this in my season recap.
Bowl trip and game recap will be coming soon.