The Aggie defense, once one of the best in the nation, has fallen on hard times.
Against Clemson, they allowed 396 yards of total offense, and allowed Charlie Whitehurst to complete 73% of his passes. They also gave up 9.7 yards per pass attempt (that's counting incompletions) before Whitehurst left with an injury.
Against SMU, they allowed 3o9 yards passing, and SMU's only touchdown came on a long passing play.
Against Texas State, Bobcat QB Barrick Nealy threw for 378 yards (at 34 attempts, that's 11.1 yards per pass attempt) and 3 touchdowns.
As a result, the Aggies are statistically last in the Big 12 in defense. Defensive Coordinator Carl Torbush, naturally, has been taking the heat from Aggie fans and pundits.
To Torbush's credit, he's been a standup guy about the whole thing:
"It starts with me ... [The Aggies] have not gotten better-than-average play from any position. That's disappointing for me because I felt like we would be better at this point than we have been."Unfortunately, he also got the dreaded "vote of confidence", so for all that honesty, he may still get fired.
Speaking of the "vote of confidence"
Carl Torbush is taking the heat for a 2-1 season, Phil Bennett, who's SMU Mustangs scored fewer points on A&M than Texas State did, is surprisingly not under any pressure despite a 7-25 career record.
And Tim Cowlishaw wonders why:
We are 17 seasons removed from the death penalty at SMU. Forrest Gregg and Tom Rossley combined to win seven of the team's first 39 games after the NCAA shut down the program. More than a decade later, Bennett has managed to do no better than that.
Harris Poll Voter gives vote to Idaho
The inagural Harris Interactive Poll for College Football has been released today. And while no one has any problem with the teams that came out with a final ranking, it's been fashionable to rip on one poll voters' choice of 0-4 Idaho. And since they don't know who said poll voter is, the press has been ripping on the whole poll.
Not that the media has any cause to be ripping on anyone for bad polling considering that they have made many a screw up doing their college football polls.
What Harris, who some readers may remember because they run one of the 2 high school polls in Texas, is learning is that there's a lot more scrutiny on a major college football poll than there is for a high school poll. High school fans are just happy to see their team ranked. College fans want their team to be ranked, and are willing to nitpick anything they see wrong with a poll if it makes their team look better.
Tomorrow: TBA
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