Previewing the Aggies’ matchup with the Trojans with advanced statistics

Howdy and welcome back to Fun With Numbers. I hope everyone reading has had a great holiday season and enjoyed the bowl slate so far. We’re here to dive into the advanced stats of the Las Vegas Bowl, putting a bow on an Aggie season that looked promising late into the season, but ended 1-3 to mark the end of Mike Elko’s first season as the Aggies’ Head Coach. There is a lot to be disappointed and concerned about, but there is also a ton of things to look forward to in the coming seasons, but we’ll talk about that later. For now… Viva Las Vegas.

What Do We Know?

The Ags travel to Vegas this week for a matchup with Lincoln Riley’s USC squad. The Trojans ended their first run in the Big Ten with a 6-6 record, an up and down season that featured a 3 game losing streak in the month of October. The Aggies are a 3.5 point favorite in the city where they’re playing, the SP+ predicts a 6 point win for the Maroon and White, while the FEI likes the Trojans by a half point. Like a lot of teams (including the Aggies), the Trojans are dealing with a reshuffled depth chart due to NFL opt outs and the transfer portal. That makes stats comparisons a little bit of a challenge, but we’re doing it anyway, and we’re going to have fun with it. Let’s take a closer look.

Aggie Offense vs Trojan Defense

Despite its inconsistency at times and inability to generate explosive plays, the Aggies will finish with an offense in the Top 30 of the SP+ and FEI. Klein’s first year as the Aggie’s playcaller wasn’t perfect, but considering the number of injuries dealt with (including your Top 2 backs) and the QB carousel that went on, I think there is a lot to look forward to next year.

They’ll be looking to end on a high note, facing what was the biggest bright spot for fans of the Trojans… the tremendous improvement of the USC Defense. In 2023, USC had completely fallen out of the Top 100 in DSP+, but they’ve made great strides in D’Anton Lynn’s first season as DC. The secondary still has a long way to go, but they looked much better against the run and have done a great job at limiting big plays.

Aggie Defense vs Trojan Offense

The Aggie defense wasn’t elite in Elko’s first year back in College Station, but it was far from bad. The secondary and linebacker play has to improve to stop explosive plays, and what was expected to be a dominant DL never was able to consistently get pressure on opposing QBs, but as a unit they were very efficient and good at generating havoc when they needed to.

In the same vein, the Trojan defense was good, but not prolific like you’ve come to expect from Lincoln Riley. Finding someone to take over for Caleb Williams has proved challenging, Miller Moss has hit the transfer portal and will likely fall on Jayden Maiava to lead the Trojans in Vegas this week. The sophomore did just enough to get wins against Nebraska and UCLA, but tossed 2 picks against Notre Dame in that 49-35 loss. Like the Aggies, explosiveness has not been their strongest suit this season, but they’ve been super efficient and run the ball really well, and the OL does a good job at protecting their QB.

So What’s the Verdict?

Like I said, the amount of players missing from either side in this matchup makes it difficult to predict. Particularly when it comes to the Aggie Defense and Trojan Offense, there will be missing pieces where failures will occur and new faces making unexpected great plays at times. I think even with the losses the Aggies will have in the Front 7, the defense will play well enough to limit the damage caused by an already hamstrung USC offense. And even without Moss, the Aggies should be able to move the ball well on the ground, with plenty of opportunity to attack a somewhat soft secondary with short passes.

My Prediction: I think the Aggies red zone defense comes up huge, holding to some key field goals and allowing the Aggies to win 27-20.

Final Notes

As always, thanks for reading along. Thanks for hanging out with me this season. There was a lot of good, and a lot of bad, the very essence of Aggie Football. I’ll see you again soon. Gig’em.

• Bcftoys.com for Brian Fremeau’s FEI data and other fun projects from him.
• ESPN.com is the home for all of Bill Connelly’s SP+ info, including the Returning Production data. You’ll need to subscribe to ESPN+ for most of his stuff these days.
• CollegeFootballData.com is a great site for data and charts that you can download and play with on your own time, in case Fun With Numbers isn’t filling that statistical void in your life. Most of my data comes from here.

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? You know where to leave ‘em.