Texas A&M’s first bye of 2014 couldn’t have come at a better time after the Aggies were routed 59-0 by Alabama last week, resulting in a third straight loss that dropped the team from the Top 25 for the first time all season.

Texas A&M’s defense has been suspect ever since head coach Kevin Sumlin arrived in College Station in 2012, but it’s the Aggies offense that has let the team down in recent week. A&M was shut out in the first half of each of its last two games, marking the first and second times a Sumlin-led offense had ever been shut out in the first half of a game. The Aggies have scored 51 total points in their last three games combined — an average of just 17 points per game — and they’ve scored 27 of those 51 points in the meaningless fourth quarters of blowout losses.

Sumlin and offensive coordinator Jake Spavital both met with the media Tuesday, and while neither confirmed the team would make a change at the quarterback position, neither coach denied that possibility, either.

“I don’t think there’s anything off the table from a position standpoint,” Sumlin said. “Something like what happened Saturday is an eye opener and should be an eye opener, not just to coaches and fans, but to players too, so we’re evaluating that situation.”

Spavital used different words to essentially say the same thing, explaining every position’s depth will be evaluated following the 59-point shellacking.

“I’m going to open up every position this week and I want to find 11 guys who want to go out there and fight and be physical and want to play,” Spavital said. “This week we’re going to have a lot of discussions and see who are the best 11 players who is going to go out there and compete for us.”

The Aggies now have two weeks to decide on their signal caller for a Nov. 1 showdown against Louisiana-Monroe, and that game could either be a chance for current starter Kenny Hill to regroup, or an opportunity for backup Kyle Allen to ease his way into the lineup against a modest Sun Belt foe.

TEXAS A&M QUARTERBACK

Players involved: Kenny Hill, Kyle Allen

Who will probably start: TBD

Who should start: Hill

It’s been a tale of two streaks for Hill, who looked like the best quarterback in the SEC during A&M’s 5-0 start to the season, but looked putrid during the Aggies’ recent three-game skid.

“Kenny Trill,” as he was affectionately known prior to A&M’s recent losing streak, set the school’s single-game passing record in his first career start, and led A&M to the SEC’s No. 1 passing offense during a 5-0 start to the season. He threw for 1,745 yards, 17 touchdowns and only two interceptions in those five games, putting himself on pace to throw for more than 4,100 yards and 40 touchdowns by season’s end.

However, following three straight losses to three teams currently ranked in the top 5 of this week’s AP Poll, Hill looked much more human. The numbers in losses to Mississippi State and Ole Miss don’t show it (again, he has a knack for padding his stats in garbage time), but Hill regressed mightily in those two games before the bottom fell out against Alabama last week. The same Hill that threw for 511 yards in a Week 1 win over South Carolina was held to just 138 yards against the Crimson Tide, marking the low-point of his brief career in a humiliating loss in Tuscaloosa.

At 5-3 on the year, Texas A&M is suddenly a middle of the pack team with no hope of winning the SEC West title. It now has two weeks to figure out whether its quarterback is an inexperienced star with upside who’s hit a bump in the road against three elite teams, or an average passer who benefitted from weak competition and a dynamic group of wideouts early in the season.

That’s where Allen comes in. The Aggies backup quarterback is a freshman who has appeared in four career games without a single start, and none of those appearances came in a game in which the result was still up in the air. He’s attempted just 38 passes all season, completing 23 of those throws for 264 yards, three touchdowns and two interceptions.

Needless to say, although A&M knows what Allen can do in practice against one of the SEC’s worst defenses, it has no idea whether he can handle the starting job full-time to close the season.

Thus, this decision will really be a judgment of Hill and his future as the leader of the offense. If the coaches think Hill will maintain his starting job next season, he deserves to keep the job for the remainder of this season. But if A&M thinks Allen could be the guy as soon as next year, it may as well give him a shot in the final four games of 2014 to get his feet wet in a low-risk, high-reward situation.

Texas A&M is all but certain to reach a bowl this year, but it won’t do anything more than that. So if Hill isn’t the future of the program, why not see what Allen can do against SEC competition with the Aggies’ fate already sealed?

In this writer’s opinion, however, Hill deserves to keep his job and continue to develop as the commander of the Aggies offense. Yes, he performed terribly in A&M’s last three losses, but no team in America will face as daunting a three-game stretch as the one Hill and A&M just endured.

That’s not an excuse, but it is a justification for his drop in production. The fact is, Hill still has the most game experience of all of A&M’s quarterbacks, and he’s developed timing with the Aggies deep group of wideouts that Allen wouldn’t be able to recreate between now and the end of the regular season. There are a lot of wrinkles to A&M’s spread pass attack, and Hill is much further along in learning to lead the offense than Allen is at this point in their careers.

Just because Hill isn’t Johnny Manziel doesn’t mean he won’t continue to grow into his role as the leader of the offense. What he accomplished early in the season might have been the result of lesser competition, but it is also evidence of what he’s capable of down the line. If Hill continues to emerge in the A&M offense, he could begin posting those kinds of performances against ranked teams as soon as next year.

Once A&M turns to Allen, there’s no turning back (barring injuries, of course). It’s not like A&M can bench Hill eight games into his career as a starter, then give the reins back to him sometime down the line as if nothing happened. If the Aggies bench Hill, his confidence will disappear faster than the Turducken at John Madden’s Thanksgiving dinner.

Allen may be a fine quarterback, but unless Hill continues to struggle against unranked opponents following this week’s bye, he deserves to keep his job through the end of this season and into the start of next year.