Texas A&M’s trip to Alabama carries more weight than a single result, according to Gigem 247’s Jeff Tarpley, who joined Your Afternoon Stretch with Glenn “Stretch” Smith to break down what’s ahead for the Aggies.
Smith framed the issue around the stretch that follows: road games at South Carolina and Oklahoma, plus home dates with Tennessee and Texas. Tarpley’s answer centered on what a win or loss in Tuscaloosa would do to how the rest of the season is viewed.
Mike Elko has said the program is in the middle of building something, but Tarpley noted that the season has “kind of stalled out in that regard” so far. And the challenge in front of A&M is a big one. Going to Tuscaloosa, Tarpley said, “it's not going to be easy to win,” and the Aggies would need to do things on both sides of the ball that they have not consistently been doing.
Alabama, meanwhile, would also need to keep dealing with the issues it has shown in recent weeks for A&M to have a real shot.
From the Aggies’ side, Tarpley said the game is about staying relevant. If A&M can win in Tuscaloosa, it heads into its bye week with a better chance to treat what comes next as one game at a time, even with that schedule looking intimidating on paper.
He laid out the path clearly: if the Aggies beat South Carolina on the road, handle Tennessee at Kyle Field and then knock off Oklahoma, then Texas would start to look more manageable. In that scenario, even if A&M does not run the table, winning the majority of those games could change the story around the season.
That kind of run, Tarpley said, might not produce a playoff berth, but it would give the Aggies a way to argue that the season was just a setback and that the program is still headed where it wants to go over the long haul.
The alternative, though, is much harsher. If A&M loses at Alabama and then drops the game at South Carolina, Tarpley said “all kinds of other questions come into play.”
That would leave Elko, his staff and others around the program facing difficult questions. And with the level of investment Texas A&M makes in football, Tarpley said underachieving against expectations can lead to major changes in the offseason.
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