Change my mind.

We squeezed out wins at Notre Dame and Arkansas

Okay. Doesn't do anything to change the op's fact

fightinag said:

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We squeezed out wins at Notre Dame and Arkansas

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Two of the best offenses in the nation at their houses. One was at night early in the season, the other was their Super Bowl.

We won both like the best team in the country would do.

A good zone run scheme chews up yards against us.

The defense is only ranked 9th in the SEC for rushing defense, allowing 127 yards per game.

It's getting better, but it's the clearest "weak" spot on the team. I think Coach Elko would agree.

Morbo the Annihilator said:

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A good zone run scheme chews up yards against us.

The defense is only ranked 9th in the SEC for rushing defense, allowing 127 yards per game.

It's getting better, but it's the clearest "weak" spot on the team. I think Coach Elko would agree.

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We just best one of the top running teams in the nation, and have played the top five of seven rushers in the sec. And beat them all.

Cool. Let me know if that's the case on January 20

fightinag said:

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We squeezed out wins at Notre Dame and Arkansas

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I was as down on this season as anyone until we beat LSU. Yes, we beat ND thanks in part to a bit of luck. But even had we lost we would be in the same spot as Bama who lost (a now meaningless) 1st game of the season against FSU.

Re: arkansas, the final score is a bit misleading as we were up 45-35 with 10 seconds left in the game. We didn't "squeeze out" the win. We were in control pretty much the whole game.

Bottom line: We are objectively better now than we were the first 6 games of the year. Both offensively and defensively.

fightinag said:

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We squeezed out wins at Notre Dame and Arkansas

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We can also discuss the rest of the top 10 squeakers.

What do you get out of trying to bring down every thread?

fightinag said:

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We squeezed out wins at Notre Dame and Arkansas

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2019 LSU.. arguably one of the greatest CFB teams of all time had a 3 point win at Home vs Auburn (9-3), a 5 point win in Tuscaloosa (10-2), and beat Texas on the road by 7 (7-5).

My point is, not one team in the modern era has gone full NCAA26 rookie mode for 12 games and blown everybody out. At the end of the season, it's wins and losses... not scores.

Bill Superman said:

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Change my mind.

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I Can't...I Won't.

You seem like a smart guy so no argument from me.

fightinag said:

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We squeezed out wins at Notre Dame and Arkansas

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Not all one-possession games are created equally. Some are basically coin flips, where the winner is determined based on who gets the breaks. This, admittedly, is how the ND game went.

Others, a team gets certain breaks and manages to get the final score close, even if it wasn't as competitive as the scoreboard looks.

If A&M doesn't get that hold away from the play in Reed's touchdown, they go up 17 with four minutes left. Regardless, Arkansas never had the ball with a chance to take the lead in the game past the first quarter. They back-doored their way to a one-possession game with a touchdown with 10 seconds left.

We played poorly. Their offense gashed us. It's the closest thing to a blemish on our resume. But this was not the same as IU needing a last-second touchdown to pull off the win. We never gave up control of the game in the entire second half. And we've dominated two ranked teams on the road since then.

We don't need to get too worked up about Arkansas.

TecRecAg said:

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fightinag said:

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We squeezed out wins at Notre Dame and Arkansas

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2019 LSU.. arguably one of the greatest CFB teams of all time had a 3 point win at Home vs Auburn (9-3), a 5 point win in Tuscaloosa (10-2), and beat Texas on the road by 7 (7-5).

My point is, not one team in the modern era has gone full NCAA26 rookie mode for 12 games and blown everybody out. At the end of the season, it's wins and losses... not scores.

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Agreed.

But you can say the same for Ohio State and Indiana.

Ohio State are the defending champs, I have no problem with them being number 1 until they lose. I personally think we should be 2 when the rankings are unveiled on Tuesday, but it's not the big of a deal if we are still at 3

Meaningless right now

We'll have our chances to prove it

If Texas, Bama, UGA, LSU, ND, OU, Oregon…. Had our exact same resume, stats, etc, every one of them would be the #1 team without question. Yet here we sit getting nit picked to death. Shoot, Texas lost twice, one of them being a really bad loss and they're back in the top 10. Do you think we are top 10 if it's our name on their resume? Not even close. I'd wager we would be around the 15-18 spot in the rankings.

Pointless discussion. Wait till the end, and the best team gets a trophy...

Morbo the Annihilator said:

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A good zone run scheme chews up yards against us.

The defense is only ranked 9th in the SEC for rushing defense, allowing 127 yards per game.

It's getting better, but it's the clearest "weak" spot on the team. I think Coach Elko would agree.

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Maybe forcing teams to be one dimensional and sustain long drives on the ground is part of the plan? If it limits total points and yards who cares if our rush against stats are sub par?

Could we be the best team in history?

With 7 minutes left in the game, it was 38 - 35.

Why do people pretend A&M was up by 20 at the half?

Its time for a new plan. Our defense struggles against the run. The two teams that had a decent qb and running game dropped 40 points on us.

Sparkie said:

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Its time for a new plan. Our defense struggles against the run. The two teams that had a decent qb and running game dropped 40 points on us.

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Your whole point on all of these threads is a team that has a good offense in both facets scores points. It's kind of a "duh" thing to say.

Sparkie said:

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With 7 minutes left in the game, it was 38 - 35.

Why do people pretend A&M was up by 20 at the half?

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Arky was close because we crapped the bed before half. We were in complete control, then let them score, went 3 and out, and let them score again all with less than 4 minutes left in the half.

We are bad at the last 4 minutes of the first half. Arky, LSU, even Mizzou. If not for the defensive turnover/TD we'd of gone into halftime only up 7.

But on the flip side we are a strong 3rd quarter and late in the game team.

Sparkie said:

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With 7 minutes left in the game, it was 38 - 35.

Why do people pretend A&M was up by 20 at the half?

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.....and at 6:52 seconds left in the game it was 45-35

Then we started putting in second string guys on defense and Arky eeked out a TD with 10 seconds to go.

Take away the gimmie TD at the end of the game and us going full ruhtard in the 2nd quarter where we absolutely sht the bed for a minute or two and gifted them a TD as a result and the score is 45-24, which is really where the game was for the most part.

We can nit pick all we want and you can pick any point in time to try to minimize or negate an accomplishment, but in the end the only time any of that matters is when there is 00:00 to go in the 4th. And so far we have had more points than our opponent 100% of the time this season at that point.

TecRecAg said:

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fightinag said:

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We squeezed out wins at Notre Dame and Arkansas

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2019 LSU.. arguably one of the greatest CFB teams of all time had a 3 point win at Home vs Auburn (9-3), a 5 point win in Tuscaloosa (10-2), and beat Texas on the road by 7 (7-5).

My point is, not one team in the modern era has gone full NCAA26 rookie mode for 12 games and blown everybody out. At the end of the season, it's wins and losses... not scores.

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Blue Parachute and EOT honors for this scholar.

100%. If the stats and games were anonymized, rankings would DEFINITELY look different.

We didn't convert some third downs in the last game. So we look stop able

I don't know who elicits more eye-rolls - the terminal BAS sufferers or the WAY over the top sunshine pumpers.

The former because that is more pathetic.

Sip here, OP is not crazy. A&M completely dominated the last two opponents on the road. QB's and D-line's dramatic improvement have made all the difference. I'd probably make OSU a slight favorite but no more than 3 points on a neutral field.

Lane Kiffin agrees.

Lane Kiffin makes the case for Texas A&M to be #1

"Texas A&M being No. 3, what more do you want them to do to be 1?"

"They went up to Notre Dame and won."

"What good did that do if that's not rewarded?

"They have the highest metrics of everybody and not No. 1." pic.twitter.com/NJ0m7qWVrw

— SEC Mike (@MichaelWBratton) November 10, 2025

ColoAg95 said:

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Pointless discussion. Wait till the end, and the best team gets a trophy...

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thanks for your input… you sure brought a lot of info to this thread…

Goose98 said:

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Lane Kiffin agrees.

Lane Kiffin makes the case for Texas A&M to be #1

"Texas A&M being No. 3, what more do you want them to do to be 1?"

"They went up to Notre Dame and won."

"What good did that do if that's not rewarded?

"They have the highest metrics of everybody and not No. 1." pic.twitter.com/NJ0m7qWVrw

— SEC Mike (@MichaelWBratton) November 10, 2025

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He's not wrong.

Sparkie said:

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With 7 minutes left in the game, it was 38 - 35.

Why do people pretend A&M was up by 20 at the half?

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Again, they never had the ball with a chance to take the lead beyond the first quarter. I'm not pretending it was a blowout, but we were in control. Our lowest win probability was around 65% and at that exact moment we went on a 10-play, 4 minute 38 second drive to ice it.