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Rejoice, football fans, because the 2014 NCAA College Football season is just around the corner. It’s time to start looking at the long road to the new College Football Championship Game in Arlington, Texas.
I’ll write plenty about the teams at the top of the tree, so I thought it would be interesting to start by shining the spotlight on five schools who, for one reason or another, need a positive and win-filled 2014 season.
Coming in at #5 is Texas A and M. Remember when the Aggies announced that they were making the jump to the SEC? Remember how many – many, I might add, with Texas Longhorn affiliations – swore blind that A and M had little to no chance of making an impact in a conference featuring national heavyweights Alabama, Louisiana State and Georgia?
Well, fast forward to the beginning of their third season of SEC battle, and you would be eating a serious amount of humble pie if you were one of those who believed that the Aggies would barely rise above perennial SEC easy-beats like Vanderbilt and Kentucky. In fact, if there’s been a more exciting team in the nation’s premiere conference, I’d like to know who.
Of course, a lot of what the Aggies did was thanks to their Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Johnny Manziel, as freakish and controversial an athlete as has ever graced the college gridiron.
Johnny Football was the only reason Texas A and M managed a 9-4 record last year, and he’s gone now, off to potentially be the saviour of the Cleveland Browns in the NFL, and Kevin Sumlin’s A and M squad is in an interesting position.
This might be a down year for the Aggies. In fact, I’m almost certain it will be, for the simple reason that they don’t have Manziel 2.0 in their backfield.
The reason I’ve got them as one of my teams who need a solid season is because there are going to be so many doubters and knockers guaranteeing anyone who’ll listen that the Aggies got lucky, and wouldn’t have achieved the success they did were it not for Manziel and the fleet of very talented skilled position players, led by the lightning-fast receiver, Mike Evans.
In part, that may be true, but Kevin Sumlin has a history of nurturing good quarterbacks, like he did with Case Keenum at Houston. There are still a few good weapons left in the Aggies cupboard. Ricky Seals-Jones should at least help to fill the Texas-sized void that Evans will leave on the fringes of the field, but the real question mark for the Aggies is who comes in to replace Manziel.
Replacing Manziel? Yeah, I know, it’s not going to happen. You don’t replace an athlete with Johnny Football’s ability, not really, but someone is going to take his place under centre for the Aggies this fall, and reports out of camp suggest that sophomore Kenny Hill and true freshman Kyle Allen are neck-and-neck in competition for the starting gig.
Neither has been stood up or stood out yet. Sumlin and his coaches will doubtless be hoping that something changes – and quickly – on that front. Whomever wins the job will have to live without offensive tackle Jake Matthews, who followed Manziel and Evans to the NFL.
A sure way to compete in the SEC is, of course, by playing defence, and the Aggies did very little of that last year. And that might’ve been okay then, because Manziel was likely to score as many points as the porous A and M defence gave up.
They were worst in the SEC, allowing 32.2 points last year, and the dismissal from camp of two major defensive stars, sophomores Isaiah Golden and Darian Claiborne, is going to hurt the Aggies on that side of the football. defence is definitely a work in progress.
Despite 13 returning starters, there’s so much uncertainty at quarterback and on defence, and I’m not sure that the Aggies will be able to match 2013’s 9-4 year. A rebuilding season in College Station, I think.
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