Previewing the game at The Swamp with advanced stats

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was written prior to Texas A&M QB Conner Weigman being added to the injury report.

Welcome back to Fun With Numbers, your advanced stats preview of the upcoming A&M game that seeks to provide optimism, but also temper expectations, while giving answers about the team, but not be too definitive about anything in particular, and be informative but not boring. It’s a little tough to do any of those things this early in the season, the stats you’ll see are almost entirely based on what both teams have shown in just two games (more like 1.5 games when you factor in garbage time), but we’re going to do our best and have fun with it.

What Do We Know?

The Fightin’ Texas Aggies make their way to the Swamp for the second time in the SEC era, both teams with 1-1 records, losses to non-conference opponents at home to open the year and wins over FCS squads, and a lot to prove early on in the season. The Aggies are favored by about 4 points in Vegas, the SP+ gives the boys in Maroon a 2.5 point advantage, while the FEI likes them by 5.6.

Aggie Offense vs Gator Defense

Conner Weigman and the rest of the group had a much better time in Week 2, albeit against competition that makes it hard to glean much. Early returns though look like the Aggies may have a very familiar offense in 2024, fairly efficient but struggling to hit big plays, especially through the air. We knew this would probably be a challenge though for this team, due to the talent at receiver, an injury to a guy like Owens, and a little bit of recent history from Klein as a playcaller. There are some positives though, the Aggie OL appears improved in both facets of the game this season and Weigman eased some concern in Game 2.

It’s also early for the Florida defense which makes it hard to say how much they’ve improved following last season’s DSP+ finish outside of the Top 70. While they managed to hold Samford to just 7 points last week, they allowed Miami to have a 54% Success Rate and put up 41 points in Week 1. Like the Aggie offense, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, and this matchup will tell a lot about where they stand on defense.

Aggie Defense vs Gator Offense

While the A&M defense seems to be solid for the most part (pitching a shutout 5 minutes into the 4th Quarter, even against McNeese State, is pretty good), there are still some key concerns. The retooled secondary has held up well in these first two weeks, however the middle of the field is struggling and giving up big run plays (2.03 Open Field Yards/Carry) and it’s hard to say how effective this pass rush is yet.

This will be an interesting game for the Gator offense as well. They really struggled against a Miami Defense that ranks 27th in DSP+ and bounced back against Samford with some really explosive plays, although still not nearly as efficient as you would expect going against that level of defense. But they were also relying on freshman DJ Lagway to take over for an injured Mertz, and it’s unclear which QB will be taking the majority of the snaps come Saturday.

Anything the Numbers Don’t Tell Us?

Weather forecast for this game is not great, probably going to be a little wet out there and maybe even suffer some lightning delays. Not sure if that benefits either team more than the other, but the Aggie ground game is probably the strongest offensive piece on the field this weekend. Florida’s injury report is also pretty long for such an early season game, the heaviest hits coming to their WR and DB rooms.

The two biggest (and wildly overplayed) storylines seem to be “Has Billy Napier lost the team?” and “Can the Aggies win a road game?” I don’t know how much either of those things actually matter here. Even if the Gators drop this game and even with a brutal schedule, you could make an argument for 5-6 more potential wins, and maybe that paired with some impressive showings from a fish QB in competitive games is enough to hold off the pitchforks. As far as the Aggies road record goes, streaks go on until they don’t. What happened under a different coaching staff has very little impact on how Elko (who was 4-7 in road games during his two seasons at Duke) prepares and leads this team on Saturday.

So What’s the Verdict?

Florida doesn’t seem like a great team, even if DJ Lagway ends up being the guy to turn things around for Billy Napier in a season that feels very much like its do-or-die for him. But a road trip in Week 3, with an Aggie team that’s still finding it’s way a bit… it’s definitely an easy game to get nervous about. A lot of questions from before Notre Dame are still hanging in the air, but we do know that the OL has seen some improvement (especially in the run game, up to a PFF grade of 78 so far vs 65.8 in 2023) and the Aggie secondary seems to be doing a better job of preventing big passing plays so far.

My Prediction: I think I like the matchup of the Aggie OL and Le’Veon Moss against this Florida Front 7, and it could be that this is the week that the defense finally notches a few sacks (currently happening on 10.34% of dropbacks for the Gator offense), and maybe some improved LB play can prevent some of the massive runs we saw against Notre Dame. Aggies steal another one in the Swamp 20-13. That under is looking really good right now.

Final Notes

Thanks for reading along, we’ll take another break next week and then be back to preview the Arkansas game. Remember, as the number of games increases, so will our meaningful data. Check out these sites below where all of my info comes from.

• 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.