In First Real Test, Aggies Humbled

ARLINGTON, Texas -- By no means had Texas A&M been as perfect this season as its 3-0 record coming into Saturday night's Southwest Classic against Arkansas might suggest.

It's just that the Aggies hadn't come up on a team strong enough to make them pay for their flaws.

But that changed Saturday night in front of an evenly divided crowd of 71,872 fans at the new Cowboys Stadium. The Razorbacks, a so-so SEC team, punished A&M for every misstep on the way to a 47-19 rout during the renewal of an old Southwest Conference rivalry.

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The Aggies dropped touchdown passes, committed penalties at the most inopportune times and blew coverages repeatedly. So much went wrong that it's easy to forget at one point they held a 10-0 lead in the first quarter and looked as though they would be the team exiting with a lopsided win in this Big 12-SEC showdown.

Of course that didn't last.

"We jumped ahead of them and really had an opportunity to take a significant lead, which we didn't do," said second-year A&M coach Mike Sherman, whose team heads into Big 12 play next week against Oklahoma State. "Good football teams take that lead and don't relinquish."

Obviously, the Aggies are still a ways away from being the team on the rise they appeared to be in their first three games. Running through a non-conference slate of mediocrity that included New Mexico, Utah State and UAB provided false hope that better days are not that far off.

Now we know better.

This team is probably looking at three or four more wins this season, at most. Somewhere the Aggie faithful are celebrating the fact Baylor is on the schedule and that they play the more forgiving part of the Big 12 North this season: Kansas State, Iowa State and Colorado.

So there is at least some reason for quarterback Jerrod Johnson to sound optimistic despite what was witnessed in the Aggies' final non-conference game.

"We still feel like we can play with anybody, I'm definitely confident in my team," he said. "Arkansas was pretty good, not trying to take anything away from them. It was just different from a scheme standpoint. We just didn't play well tonight so we've got to live with that."
The offensive line rotated eight players and could have possibly put them on the field all at the same time and it would have made a difference the way Johnson had to run for his life all night. Defensively, A&M is much better along its front but the secondary is still way too green.

How many times did Arkansas quarterback Ryan Mallett drop back and find open receivers without a defender within five yards? Or if the defender was there, he'd often be left grabbing for air on what should have been a sure tackle.

Mallett torched the A&M secondary for 271 yards and four touchdowns on 17-of-27 passing for the night. Four different receivers caught touchdown passes. But to add insult to injury, the Razorbacks would come up with big runs like Ronnie Wingo's 62-yard touchdown run late in the fourth quarter that showed there were far too many holes for A&M's defense to plug.

"They got caught up with our passing game and the receivers only and that left us open to slip into the back door and score a couple touchdowns," said Arkansas running back Michael Smith.

Starting late in the first quarter, the Razorbacks went on a 30-0 run to take a 30-10 lead at halftime. Early on, the Aggies had controlled the tempo with balance of passing and time-draining runs by running backs Cyrus Gray and Christine Michael in taking the 10-0 lead.

But then Sherman fell in love with the pass despite all the warning signs, none more glaring than the happy feet Johnson had to develop to avoid the rush. It also would have been wise to try to control tempo with the run as the Arkansas offense started to get into a groove.

Instead, Johnson threw 58 passes, completed 30 of them for 345 yards and two touchdowns. That certainly doesn't translate into success for a team that in a serious youth movement on both sides of the football.

"I started off thinking we were going to run it and got away from it a little bit," Sherman said. "We went back to it and should have stayed with it longer and take some of the pressure off [Johnson] and the offensive line. That's my fault."

It seemed like the harder Johnson tried, the more he got into trouble. He was chased and hit constantly, forcing him to throw off his back foot. And when he did make a good throw, something went wrong like the Ryan Tannehill drop of a 60-yard touchdown pass that would have put the Aggies ahead 17-7 late in the first quarter.

Johnson also created his own problems such as the fumble in the Arkansas red zone that turned into an 85-yard touchdown return that put the Razorbacks up 21-10 late in the second quarter.



But Johnson, whose night received an exclamation point when he was hammered with 13 seconds remaining in the game and no chance to win on a hit by Tenarius Wright that caused his second fumble of the night, remains optimistic.

"I think we just have to stay the course," he said. "The biggest thing in life is handling adversity. This is our first step in adversity this year. For a lot of our players this is their first loss in college. Of course you want to win them all, but occasionally you are going to lose.

"It's something we have to learn from as a group and get stronger. You can't go backwards in this type of situation. We have to adapt and overcome adversity."