Aggies Ascending?

Another case of spilling chicken savagery of well-crafted wordage. Meant to be “Aggies Ass-ending” imo.

Phil Steele’s All-Big 12 preseason team is out. Austin Box is 3rd team and Blake Gideon is 1st team. I’m not sure which is more ridiculous.

He thinks Michael is like Goodson. Not quite. If we stay healthy I think A&M goes 10-2.

http://blog.philsteele.com/2011/05/27/2011-preseason-all-acc-and-all-big-12-teams/

this fellow connelly is right. every year the media does pick some poor wretch to overhype. i know we were the recipients a couple of times back there a ways, and it always ticked me off no end. then more recently tech and okie state got it back-to-back and mizzou somewhere in there. somehow the thought of tech and okie anything back-to-back is pretty disgusting, and it certainly was those two years.

i don’t know what the med-types are up to with this. i’ve engaged a few national types in email convos the past several years and, at some point, usually ask why they do that. either the other end of the line stonewalls or truly doesn’t know what i’m talking about, but somebody gets it every year. i had decided it was a big 12 thing exclusively, but connelly lists clemson and ole maid — i mean ole miss — as abusees, so i guess it isn’t just a mighty 12 matter.

good article. this sbnation thing is rocking.

He thinks Michael is like Goodson. Not quite. If we stay healthy I think A&M goes 10-2.

Somehow I found this rebuttal slightly less compelling than Connelly’s 2500 words of closely-reasoned analysis and a dozen graphs.

Phil Steele’s All-Big 12 preseason team is out. Austin Box is 3rd team and Blake Gideon is 1st team. I’m not sure which is more ridiculous.

There are definitely some weird picks on that list. Arthur Brown as first team LB? From what I recall, Brown struggled at Miami for two years then transferred to KSU and sat out a year. Basically his resume consists of “Was a 5 star recruit four years ago”. I guess what Steele is trying to say is that there really aren’t many strong LBs or safeties in the conference.

Re Steele: He has Malcolm Brown first team and Brandon Williams second team. Uh…

Malcolm Brown is is the only offensive player we have on the first three teams. Ha ha ha ha!

I’ll start a Phil Steele thread.

Oops, Magnus derailed your thread. I’ll apologize on his behalf.

My bad, I forgot about those BC wide e-mails begging the readership to abstain from interacting with nordberg.

I thought Connelly did a good job on his writeup of A&M. Definitely better than most of the preseason college football annuals that pop up on newsstands around this time of year.

Looking forward to his take on Texas.

Seems to be a fair and balanced write up. They’ll have to prove that last year was not fluke. In our case, lookkng back 4 years may not give a good picture of the team as a lot has changed since then. Losing Von & Hodges will hurt. The things that will help are:
1. 2nd year in Deruyter’s system.
2. New freshman punter for Ohio should help the worst of our special teams.
3. If Lemarc Strahan comes in and adds quality depth at the NT position.
4. Patrick Lewis stepping up at Center.
5. Get the Db’s healthy who had to sit out the spring – Frederick, Judie, Lionel Smith and Campbell.
6. Move Fuller to a lot of different receiver positions on the field.

Isn’t Hodges the white LB that Colt burned? If so, he was basically a smaller, slower, slightly smarter Reed Boyd. I’m thinking he might not be missed as much as you think.

Hodges came into his own last year and was an immensely better player than he was his junior year. The knock was that he was too slow, didn’t react well, etc., and last season he just became a ballhawk and was one of A&M’s top players and a leader on defense.

The article is interesting but I think misses a few points.

One is that A&M’s record over the last several years is largely due to weakness in the trenches on both sides of the ball. Sherman has recruited heavily there, rebuilt those units and developed an actual two deep (especially on the offensive side). That should greatly improve the program’s sustainability.

Most programs also generally undergo a lot of player turnover from season to season and I don’t see much accounting for the return of 18 starters, something I’d think would be a pretty huge factor on a team that could’ve easily been 10-2 if not for a few plays against OSU and Arkansas.

Phil Steele does some great work. Check out his Top 10 from last year – dude was spot on:

http://www.philsteele.com/miscpages/AP_CCH_POLLS/Projected_AP_Top_10/2010_Proj_T10.html