Since the turn of the century, Texas A&M had started a season 5-0 on 4 previous occasions.
In 2001, the Aggies started 5-0 before losing their sixth game. They didn’t do it again until 2014, but that sixth win was again elusive. They started 5-0 in 2015, too, but lost their sixth game again.
On Saturday, the fifth-ranked Aggies handled Florida, 34-17, to move to 6-0 and tie the 2016 squad for the best start to a season by a Texas A&M team in 3 decades.
Quarterback Marcel Reed threw for 234 yards, ran for 37 yards, and scored 2 touchdowns. The ground game produced 181 yards total. The defense held Florida to only 74 rushing yards.
The Gators scored the first points of the game. They knotted things up at 14-14 at the end of the first quarter.
Over the final 45 minutes of the game, Texas A&M outscored Florida 20-3 and held the Gators to just 162 yards. Florida averaged only 3.7 yards per play over the final 3 quarters.
A month ago, Florida quarterback DJ Lagway threw a bevy of interceptions to doom the Gators on the road, but it wasn’t the turnovers that killed the Gators this time around. Though the Aggies recovered 2 of Florida’s 3 fumbles, the relentless pass rush was the issue Florida couldn’t solve. And that manifested on third downs, where the Gators converted just once in 11 tries.
The Aggies finished with 3 sacks and 6 tackles for loss. Aggie defenders were also credited with 5 hurries. Since recording just 2 sacks against Notre Dame, A&M has 12 sacks in its first 3 conference games. No SEC offensive line has had an answer so far for the Aggie front.
That unit now becomes Arkansas’s problem to try and deal with. The Razorbacks host the Aggies next Saturday.
Florida (2-4, 1-2 SEC) will face Mississippi State next weekend.
Texas A&M 34, Florida 17
Here’s the Texas A&M-Florida box score (use the dropdown menu to select team or player stats), followed by the complete play-by-play:
Marcel Reed vs DJ Lagway
A statistical breakdown of how Texas A&M’s Marcel Reed played compared to Florida’s DJ Lagway:
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
