If you consumed anything related to Texas A&M football in the offseason, there’s a 100% chance that at some point, Bobby Petrino was mentioned.

Petrino’s arrival in College Station was met with great intrigue. It wasn’t just that the well-traveled former Arkansas coach was back in the SEC for the first time since he donned a neck brace and apologized. It was that Petrino was set to become Jimbo Fisher’s first offensive play-caller, which meant 2 fiery coaches who hadn’t answered to anyone on the offensive side of the ball in 2 decades would be working together. There was natural skepticism about that relationship, especially when up until fall camp, Fisher refused to confirm that Petrino was A&M’s primary play-caller and many wondered if egos would get in the way of the task at hand. That is, rebuilding an archaic offense.

Five weeks in, there’s a clear takeaway from the Petrino experiment. It’s working. Like, it’s working as well as any A&M fan could’ve hoped. We’re even getting regular postgame praise from Fisher about Petrino’s play-calling.

It’s been a total turnaround for an Aggies offense that endured a 13-game stretch without hitting 30 points vs. FBS competition until the 2022 regular-season finale against LSU. In 5 games with Petrino at the helm, A&M scored at least 27 points each week. The only other SEC program that accomplished that feat was Kentucky. Perhaps even more telling, this is the first instance that a Fisher-coached team had a streak of 5 consecutive games with 27 points since 2014 Florida State, AKA the final year of the Jameis Winston era in Tallahassee.

Skeptics, be damned. A&M is lighting up the scoreboard. The offense enters Saturday’s Alabama showdown ranked No. 20 in scoring (37.4 points per game) and No. 30 in passing with just 4 fewer passing touchdowns (14) than it had all of last season.

Never mind the fact that the Aggies reached those marks with a season-ending injury to starting quarterback Conner Weigman. When you have the right scheme and talented players to execute that scheme, you can withstand a blow like that. It helps that A&M has one of the best backup quarterbacks in the country in Max Johnson, who has a career 44-8 TD-INT ratio (it’s 28-6 vs. SEC competition).

We saw Johnson take center stage Saturday in his first start with Petrino calling plays. The result was a 34-point, 414-yard effort wherein Johnson made more than enough plays to keep Arkansas at an arm’s length:

Evan Stewart’s jumping, toe-tapping grab on the sideline later in the game — he appeared to get the wind knocked out of him on the hit — was even more impressive. Their connection appears to be locked in. With this scheme, a healthy Stewart could be well on his way to becoming the first 1,000-yard receiver on a Fisher-coached team since Rashad Greene did so for Florida State in 2014.

Sensing a theme here?

As crazy as it sounds, the early returns of the Petrino-led offense are comparable to Florida State’s high-powered group that reached the inaugural Playoff:

Offensive production
2014 FSU (14 games)
2023 A&M (5 games)
Scoring offense
33.7
37.4
Yards/play
6.4
6.5
Passing yards/game
303
283
Rushing yards/game
138
160
Total yards/game
441
443
20-yard plays/game
5.7
5.4

Yes, the sample size is still small with the 2023 A&M squad. Nobody is saying the Aggies are en route to the Playoff like the FSU squad that did so with a 13-0 start.

But perspective is important as it relates to Fisher. The assumption when he took the job in College Station was that the Aggies would have explosive offenses that rivaled what we saw during his peak in Tallahassee. Instead, we’ve yet to see A&M produce an All-SEC quarterback or finish with a top-3 offense in the SEC. This offense might not produce either of those things, but unlike previous years, it doesn’t feel like that’s off the table heading into October.

You can say these things when you have a balanced, prolific offense. It doesn’t guarantee 2020 levels of success, though it’s worth remembering that the 2020 offense ran the ball for 205 yards per game with one of the best offensive lines in America. The more accurate take is that as long as A&M’s receivers stay healthy — that’s never a given in this conference — Petrino’s offense can absolutely compete with anybody remaining on that schedule.

That includes the next team on the schedule, Alabama. In consecutive years, we watched a much lesser version of the A&M offense rise to the occasion and nearly pull off 2 victories. Of course, the last time that Alabama came to College Station back in 2021, Zach Calzada had an out-of-body experience for an Aggie offense that averaged 6.5 yards per play on a victorious, 41-point night.

The odds are that we won’t see a shootout quite like that in part because the 2023 version of Alabama is built much differently than its former self. A&M continuing that vastly improved run defense against an offense that wants to play, as it’s been phrased, “joyless murderball,” will also have a big say in Saturday’s outcome.

Unlike the previous 2 years, the Aggies aren’t 3-score underdogs. As of Monday afternoon, Alabama is only a 2.5-point favorite. Sure, part of that is because of an inconsistent Tide offense that isn’t ranked in the top 50 in any significant offensive metric. But there’s respect being shown to an A&M offense that’s done a masterful job of flipping the script in 2023.

Fisher’s hire of Petrino raised eyebrows across the college football landscape. If you’ve been paying attention to the A&M offense in 2023, your eyebrows should be raised for a different reason.