Texas A&M vs. USC (Las Vegas Bowl)
December 27, 2024 at 7:40pm
Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas, Nevada: 26,671 (of 65,000)
Total Time: 3 hours 37 minutes

In the latest edition of business as usual, this post is definitely not late. The plan was always to post this at the end of the postseason. Just kidding. We don’t do lies here, only jokes. Without further delay:

Two teams wracked by mass transfers in the transfer portal faced off against each other in the SRS Distribution Las Vegas Bowl. What started out as a defensive battle in the first half, ended in a shootout and a comeback for the ages just to narrowly avoid a losing season. TAMU? more like TEMU, am I right??While that hardly seems like an accomplishment, we can’t miss the greater picture here: Lincoln Riley is 2-0 against the SEC this season. 

——skip up to the next indicator if you don’t feel like reading about my random rants on college football——

These ain’t just any SEC teams like 1-7 Kentucky or 0-8 Mississippi State. They’re in the tier of the 3 (SEC)-loss teams that finished just outside of the playoff contention. All of them sit in a six-way tie alongside Alabama and Ole Miss. Going back to what I was saying earlier, the real joke is that there wouldn’t be any more delays. I’d rather go on this tangent about the SEC.

Remember the narrative that Lincoln Riley ran away from Oklahoma because he’s afraid of the SEC? He took a “bad” USC team and went undefeated against the “best” conference in college football. Meanwhile, Oklahoma’s first season in the SEC had them winning only just as many SEC matchups as USC. This is a conference that plays 7 or 8 home games and only have to play one or two tough teams out of conference. This USC team might’ve been 10-2 and getting blown out in a playoff game if they were in the SEC. Then again…they didn’t get blown out by either of the two currently live playoff teams they played (Notre Dame and Penn State). 

Since I waited for the end of the postseason, I’m also going to insert my comments about the system. I’m not even going to get into the need for more guardrails and standardization regarding NIL and the transfer portal…or anything about the impending super conferences, playoff structure, and how teams are selected. But at the very least, shouldn’t all the conferences play the same number of conference games? But anyway, I digress…

—–start here if you are purely here for the game recap——-

As great as it was to witness the largest bowl comeback in USC history, it was not without some of the same issues we’ve seen all season. There was some weird time management at end of half that ended in a field goal attempt, which, as expected, did not make it. Then there were some really bad decisions by Jayden Maiava, some resulting in picks. One particularly bad choice was when he didn’t want to take a sack, so he ran backwards then attempted to throw the ball away and could possibly have been flagged for intentional grounding or have it be ruled a fumble. “Luckily”, it only resulted in a 13 yard loss on 1st down. 

In a much later driver, Makai Lemon, as much as he has been an improvement over Zach Branch at the return game, made a less than ideal situation to fair catch a punt at one point that forced the team to start from the 4-yard line. That put some extra pressure on Maiava to throw the ball from the end zone, which led to a poor throw and interception. Somehow, the defense held on and the team benefitted from the error of Texas A&M missing their field goal.

Even in their shining moment they were not able to act without error. The delay of game penalty at the goal line due to substitution could have been a backbreaker. While that rule is also some garbage that they need to revisit, it’s been that way for years, so Riley should have been aware of how it would play out. Luckily, they were still able to score the touchdown to put them up.

Just to finish up the last bit of negativity, they could have incorporated more read options plays than the two they used. If you’re going to replace Miller Moss with a running QB, then you might as well take advantage of it, especially if the running QB turns the ball over a lot. But it’s hard to be too harsh on them after such a large comeback win.

Regardless of the struggles, this team hasn’t given up on games this season. Down as much as 17, they found a way to get back in it even after all the mistakes that began to pile up. It’s impressive that they were able to score more in the fourth quarter than they did the rest of the game.

Good/Badisms

• Good: Bryan Jackson earning some hard fought yards with both the #1 and #2 running backs gone
• Bad: Eddie Czaplicki’s injury in first half after being hit by a Texas A&M player for a penalty.
• Good: Ryon Sayeri carried on the Ray Guy winner’s legacy with a 57 yard punt
• Good: Makai Lemon’s 46-yard kick off return
• Good: Lemon’s behind the back stiff arm after the catch and run, as if he had a camera on the back of his helmet
• Bad: Being down to having walk-ons in the rotation on the offensive line
• Good: Akili Arnold and Kamari Ramsey with their interceptions in back-to-back drives that kept the score close in the first half
• Good: Ja’Kobi Lane with 3 touchdown receptions in the second straight game.

CommBro Breaker

Couldn’t help myself. Just a tad bit more negativity. This game was probably rougher for TAMU since they it would’ve been 9:30PM to 1:30AM in their home time zone. 

I don’t know what kind of stat this is stat: Maiava somehow completed almost every kind of stat this game with a pass, run, reception, interception, and tackle.

Confusing Offensive Stats: USC was 16th in first downs, 23rd in Total Offense, 25th in third down conversions, but 51st in points per game. Confusingly enough, their 70.91% TD percentage in the red zone is good for 23rd in the nation as well. All those yards and conversions somehow weren’t turning into points. I think what tells more of the story is that they were 93rd in fourth down conversions, failing 9 out of 17 times and 108th in field goal percentage, missing 7 out of 21. That’s at least 16 drives there that failed to score. USC averaged 11.4 drives per game (when removing OT and garbage time), so that means that’s a game and a half worth of failed drives. Throw in the 21 turnovers lost…that was exactly 25% of their drives failed to score points