2008 Texas A&M Football Preview - State of the Union

I’m not really sure where Mike Sherman is supposed to be better than Dennis Franchione.

Generally decent write-up, except not as many funny lines as some of the other ones. I was, in general, disappointed, but I’m sure you’re used to hearing that from people…

Much like the A&M coaching search committee, I mailed this one in.

I think anyone who has watched much football would readily agree that Sherman is a superior offensive mind (NFL Offensive Coord and Head Coach) to Fran (leading rusher was your QB – yuor QB?? – WTF?)

And Kines must be a better defensive coach than – than…. what the hell was that guy’s name? I know this as I’ve seen pictures of Kines walking upright.

Kines is the best agg hire in decades.

It’s not easy making fun of a lousy football team when you manage to lose to that same crappy team two years in a row. After we kick their ass this year, next years preview will be much funnier.

I think anyone who has watched much football would readily agree that Sherman is a superior offensive mind (NFL Offensive Coord and Head Coach)

And we all know that “superior offensive minds” from the NFL mean certain dominance of the CFB ranks. Ask Charlie Weis. He’ll tell you.

It wurkd fer me

And that Pete Carroll guy – he sucked as well.

We lost to this team. Twice. At least once a week in the past year that thought has crossed my mind and I just can’t seem to wrap my head around it.

I think more former NFL retreads fail than succeed in college. Wannstedt comes to mind, as does Callahan. That being said, I’m not sure how you would rank coaches like Dennis Erickson, Butch Davis, etc. Those guys bounce back and forth but had success in college to begin with…

you came a late game fumble and greg davis accidently discovering the zone read again from losing to us twice in the last two years. Think about that for a minute.

Ask Bill Callahan. I think he’s in Tibet right now, “finding himself”.

I agree with Big Satan here.

Are guys with NFL backgrounds successful in college? All sorts of examples can be trotted out to prove either side.

I know one thing – schools brag like hell to recruits about the NFL experience they have on their coaching staffs. At SMU’s junior day, I think I heard “NFL” at least twice in every sentence uttered.

Maybe this is the year that the media will finally stop perpetuating the myth that Jorvorskie Lane is a great running back. Jorvorskie Lane is a great tactical weapon for close quarters fighting, much like the bayonet, or intestinal gas. Just because something is good at stabbin’ doesn’t mean you make it your primary weapon of war.

Funny… This year’s #10 ranked team couldn’t beat the poorly ags the last two years, was it rivalry or poor coaching? Why 10th?
“quarterback who can’t consistently throw”, I know it was 3A H.S. football but McGee finished his career with 8,256 passing yards and a 3A state-record 101 passing touchdowns … as a senior, McGee completed 196-of-313 passes for 3,579 yards with 47 touchdowns and only 3 interceptions. Sherman may let him used his best talent, “a passing QB”… R.C. wasn’t invited to a Fran practice, so he didn’t know what they were doing, R.C. & Kubiak knows Sherman can coach, but as James stated does he have the weapons? That’s one big cheeeze-burger, should let Jorvorskie eat one after each TD!

Pretty good.
I’d suggest one edit though:
“[Heard]’s ability to dominate games- not involving Texas- is mostly mythical at this point.”

But McGee has shown extremely limited ability to hit the broad side of a barn in almost every opportunity in college. That’s not saying he whether he was injured or not, it’s just a statement of his passing performance up to this point. As for HS, well, he had Jordan Shipley to throw to as well…

I’d suggest one edit though:
"[Heard]’s ability to dominate games- not involving Texas- is mostly mythical at this point."

Yeah, we need to put a John Lithgow mask on McCoy this year so Heard won’t kill him.

and we all know how Jordan Shipley has turned out…

I hold out great hope that McGee is going to have a break-out year this season. I also hope the Easter Bunny still comes and that my new ideas in carbon paper technologies will make me a bazzilion-aire.

McGee was a great passing quarterback in high school, but four years under Franchione probably didn’t help him much.

And I do wish Jordan Shipley had his durability.

Good writeup, as usual. I generally agree, although I think our personnel on defense is better than most people expect. Of course, most people expect that they are mongoloids riding Segways, so there’s nowhere to go but up.

Nice Jurassic Park reference.

As a Packers fan, I’ll throw in my 2 cents here. I thought Sherman was a decent though not spectacular NFL coach. I could see his offense working in college provided he dumbed down the passing game alot (the West Coast Offense doesn’t have the best track record in college…see Nebraska under Cally.)

His real failing was as an NFL GM. He was terrible at evaluating and drafting players. I’ll be interested to see how that will translate when it comes to recruiting.

“Much like the A&M coaching search committee, I mailed this one in.”

Too bad you used the Wells Fargo stagecoach, while A&M used UPS overnight.

At least McGee will have already gotten some work in at receiver for the day we realize he still can’t throw. I seem to remember a couple TD passes coming from Jorvorskie’s gloved hand…

I have higher hopes for McGee’s passing this year as he won’t be getting the crap beat out of him on running plays all game long. On the other hand those might be traded for beatings in the pocket on pass plays due to suspect line play. I hope the new coaches can teach technique and game plan to get a few wins we might not otherwise get.

Really, how bad could Sherman be …

from an Ag – solid, pretty funny write up all around. I got some good laughs. I think the overarching point is that A&M is decent, but compared to the local talent at ou, ut, and l$u, we look thin.

Also, I object to being compared with Joe Kines. He doesn’t know a thing about yelling at clouds.

I know we’ve all seen it but I always enjoy it. I love this guy.

Kines making the handjob motion as he talks about his defense is pure gold.

Texas fans were all excited about Kines when his name was mentioned as a possible defensive coordinator candidate last season. He’s got a tough job in front of him.

Dang ponderos, I was trying to forget that game, at least the wrecking crew came out in the 4th quarter against their practice squad. That game and the Oiler-Bills game I have tried to erased from memory, it’s not working.

“Sherman is going to have to come up with a passing offense using a quarterback who can’t consistently throw, a receiving corps that can’t catch and an offensive line that can’t pass block”

edit: unless they are playing tu ;)

I’d just like to stand up for Gary Darnell for a second. That guy salvaged so many wins with shitty talent. He turned a bad group of players into a cohesive unit that saved Fran a couple times in his two years.

Is Kines a better coach? Probably. Will his defenses perform better? Probably not. The last two seasons were the ceiling for A&M football, and this year’s squad is even worse.

dwix. Stoops was having Paul Thompson (a backup at the time) take a knee on first and goal at the 3-yard line so they wouldn’t score 80, but yeah … I guess you can call that a wrecking crew shutout for 15 minutes.

“The last two seasons were the ceiling for A&M football”

Unpack that though. Try to do it as a football fan and not a Texas fan.

I try to remember I’m on a Texas fansite and take everything with a grain of salt, but I’m challenging that statement both as an Aggie and a college football fan.

I assume he means a high water mark for this year’s expected results, not forever, but who knows.

ChrisApplewhite thinks Slocum hung the moon.

TexAgs on the link.

South ’06 = AggieSouth06

DUN DUN DUN!

I went to that texags link. What are those people going to do when AT&F and the FBI show up on their doorstep?

Thanks James for the therapy… Love Ya Blue is now in the past, go Texans!

ponderos, I heard about taking the knee, Stoops didn’t want to run up the score, only 77-0. He’s such a nice guy!

For the reverse side of the coin, check out my preview for our 2008 season.

Pretty objective, don’t you think?

Backing them up is, well, the goal line.

Love it.

Now that TexAgs is on the case, I see this combox thread devolving into illiterate rants by a swarm of dyslexic e.e. cummings fans. I thought the Mizzou preview was in danger of pushing BC.com over the interweb fire marshal’s maximum occupancy for blithering, spittle-tossing, knee-jerk defenses of underachieving programs and the fans who love them, but this preview is sure to do so. Get out while you still can.

You’ll be suprised, Laces Out. Most of us love these. Look at the comments from last years’.

Last year’s preview

“looked at the depth chart with all the undisguised horror of Thomas Keller reading the menu at Applebee’s and then promptly fled”

Genius.

Laces, was Mizzou underachieving last year? Or overachieving? It is so hard for us new money folk to understand your old money ways. At least you guys still have money, I guess. Listening to Nebraska fans is like being strapped Clockwork Orange-style in front of a neverending Sirius broadcast of Mortimer and Randolph at the end of Trading Places. Get those brokers back in here! Turn this recruiting back on!

“Kines thought he had retired, but after driving his car through a farmers market in Tuscaloosa he was sentenced to community service on the Aggie staff. He brings a lot of experience to the job even though he occasionally interrupts practice to yell at clouds.”

Genius!!!

I think I have seen it all. A Texas fan defending Gary Darnell. The only offense Darnell knew how to stop was the Longhorns. Maybe that is why he was at Texas so long. His defenses looked so good in practice.

We are very thin on the OL and at LB. I think better coaching overall will lead to one more win than last year so am looking at 8-4 but 7-5 would not surprise me. Just looking forward to being able to watch a game without pondering whether or not to gouge my eyes out in frustration over the coaching.

Only Mack, Duane and Greg could lose to this mess two years [three?] in a row.

Clarification: South ‘06, you and other sane Ags who were here before today’s TexAgs link were not the subject of my tongue-in-cheek warning.

This isn’t going to get me banned from BC like I got banned from Hornfans, is it? Please oh please, show me some mercy! I have nowhere else to go but www.mackbrown-texasfootball-suspends-reality-while-bill-little-reweaves-the-time-space-continuum-and-returns-us-to-1968.com. Save me, Scipio-wan, you’re my only hope!

Was the statue of David picture meant as a subliminal reminder that we were beat by the little guy for two consecutive years? Or just to infer that aggies have small penises?

The Thomas Keller reference, as well as Grandpa Simpson yelling at the clouds (my favorite Simpsons reference) were golden.

hmm…how bout them Aggs beating us sips the last 2 years. With our talent this year and old yeller teeth, they may make it 3 in a row.

let’s party. i like to party, will you with me.

darn they got our number. old yeller tooth, please don’t let us down. Please let us win another 10 games, even it means we get beat by the Good Guys.

And that Pete Carroll guy – he sucked as well.

give it a rest aggies Sherman is no Pete Carroll. Pete Carroll has a couple things working for him that aggyland doesnt.
1) 5* recruits will flock to southern cali not some hill billy racist redneck town.
2) Pete Carroll has a lil more class and personality than Sherman’s boring old ass
3)Serman didn’t develop Brett Favre, Brett Favre was already in the system and didn’t need much coaching. Credit the previous coach for developing Brett.

Wake up and smell the sheep dung you retarded rednecks

I had no idea before that the Ags were the best team in 1927. I knew that their claims to a 1919 MNC were hokie. A review of records shows that the 1927 seems more legit. The quality of southwest football was better, and Illinois’ claim seems not as strong (they had a similar record to TAMU- no losses but tied once). Joel Hunt was the star of that Ag team, and he was one of the SWC’s greatest players of that era.

Correction – Joel Hunt was the greatest SWC player ever. (hey, he used to give me free ice cream – I owe the guy!)

LOL – I’ll bet 2 thousand dollars that you are more redneck than me, the people I hang out with, and 90% of College Station in general. If you’re gonna thrown insults, try a few that didn’t fucking go out of date in 1952.

You know, you could actually provide some real football analysis in addition to taking random shots at another team.

Better yet, leave the previews to Scipio.

Where the f do you live that you think College Station isn’t redneck?

Bryan?

“I assume he means a high water mark for this year’s expected results, not forever, but who knows.”

This is correct. I meant that the last two season were absolutely as good as those teams could’ve been.

I see. I just read it wrong.

I agree with you about last season’s team, but in ‘06 we were a few blown coaching decisions away from beating OU and Nebraska. There was really nothing we could do about the Tech loss. Graham just nailed that pass. And let’s not even talk about the dismantling at Cal. But the OU and Nebraska games were incredibly winnable.

They are as good as they could have been with that coaching staff. htmfh….

“I agree with you about last season’s team, but in ‘06 we were a few blown coaching decisions away from beating OU and Nebraska.”

In my worldview results and performance are two different things. I agree that those games could have gone either way, and I think if A&M and NU played 50 times that year each team would win at least 20. But I focus more on how well teams play throughout. A&M got better as the season wore on and I’m not really sure how any other coaches squeezes anything more out of that team.

“They are as good as they could have been with that coaching staff. htmfh….”

True. I just wonder why you think that the new coaching staff will be better. Fran’s biggest failing was recruiting, and Sherman won’t be any better there. Aside from a few big in game blunders, A&M’s ‘06 and ’07 were tough, physical, and technically sound. The talent just wasn’t there overall. What little you guys id have was well used, outside of maybe Bennett in the passing game. Maybe.

D-1A college football has changed the last few years. It used to be that if a defense had top 30 talent, and was well prepared for an opponent, they could usually hold the opposing offense to 25 points or less. This meant that conservative game plans were a reasonable strategy.

Something changed the last few years. I suspect the spread offenses, which make it easier than before for a weaker team to get the ball to its best offensive playmakers in space. This means that superior teams can’t game plan to go into a shell and wait for their superior talent to win out.

For some reason, Fran’s offense did not have that “big play” element consistently, and his grind-it-out approach was too risky for the Ags’ talent level, playing a B12 schedule. His spread QB couldn’t make the big runs, nor did he find (maybe they weren’t there) the wide open receiver in space.

Sherman’s offense will be interesting. Certainly, the NFL is a tougher game. However, a lot of NFL offensive schemes are based on the recognition that the opposing squad has top talent superbly coached. NFL offenses don’t have plays to take advantage of broken coverages; they assume coverages won’t be broken enough to do so. NFL teams can’t use plays that require an individual player to be overmatched. An NFL scheme transfered directly to D-1A probably wouldn’t score as much as a well-coordinated spread option.

College teams can assume that there will be breakdowns in the coverages, and that their best playmakers can overpower the opponents. It will be interesting to see how much of the NFL scheme Sherman retains.

Fran’s offense consisted of Stephen McGee, a mediocre OL, and 4 tight ends. Bill Walsh couldn’t get big plays out of that group.

The big plays came on the ground because that’s where the talent is. If Sherman thinks McGee is capable of running his offense, even simplified, he is going to be Callahan’d really quickly.

From all I’ve heard, the intent is to make Goodson to focal point of the offense.

Sherman seems to be smart enough to figure out who the best ballplayer on the team is right now, the same way perhaps Brown/Davis are figuring out that John is the best player on y’alls team.

Depends on how you define ‘player.’

I’ve been reading Henry James’ stuff since before Hornfans. He’s good at the sarcastic one-liners but not so good when he’s forced to write any more than that.

These are far better left in Scipio’s hands.

Pretty solid writeup. I think you are a little too hard on our defensive ends as Bennett and Obiozor are adequate, but I’m not going to call the assessment wrong either. You also failed to mention our best player, Justin Brantly. That’s one guy you know is going to see a lot of reps.

Count me among those who thinks Sherman doesn’t have much of a chance of real college success.

This isn’t even some coach who can set down roots if he has success and be a longterm coach. The dude is in his mid fifties and many think he already should have retired. I would have preferred a younger, more charismatic coach. A workaholic, a real asshole. Like Bob Stoops when OU grabbed him.

Extremely poor hire by Bill Byrne and company. Not that it would matter because Bear Bryant, Bill Parcells and Chuck Norris combined couldn’t get this team into the Holiday Bowl. Makes me sick, quite honestly.

A&M lost their highest rated player, Ivory Wade, in yet another decommitment. Best part? Lost to Baylor.

New coaches usually bring that “new coach smell” excitement to the recruiting trail, but it looks like Sherman has totally failed to do that. Their recruiting class sucks right now.

Also, let me agree with Objective Aggie, Michael Bennett is a pretty nice player. At least when he plays us.

I would just like to point out that you guys have now referenced Jurassic Park TWICE during the series.

Good or bad? Discuss amoungst yourselves.

Please note that some Ags objected to this mindless good ol’ boy hire as soon as Sherm was announced. I also mentioned McGee could not succeed without being a “run also” QB and that we would probably lose 6 games this year.

I stand corrected. I think we’ll lose 8 this year. Thank God I get to go to grad school in a couple of years and find a new fucking football team.

Oh, and Michael Bennett did have a fumble recovery in that abortion of a game. He’s a nice player.

College Station isn’t a “hillbilly racist” town. You shitbag have never been there, nor are you accurately describing rural America, meanwhile SOUTH CENTRAL LA, where USCheat is, is a racist, gang infested, crime infested hell hole…lol at you shitbag.

HenryJames, I’ve got some bad news for you. You are a shitbag.

That’s not exactly news.

it could be worse, you could be a flaming shitbag and be sitting on my porch.

So far it looks like the entire aggie QB depth chart is preparing for the Black Knights of Army by feigning injury. Jerrod Johnson was spotted in the aggie medical library (okay next to that one book labeled “Asprin: elixer, black magic or fraud?”) looking up “unverifiable, debilitating, soft tissue injury”. I am totally joking, actually he just started at “A” and slammed the book down in disgust 11 seconds later.

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