GigEm After Party: Assessing Texas A&M’s 52-10 win over McNeese State in Kyle Field

what's up guys this is Carter Carl with jigum 247 here at Kyle Field after Texas A&M defeated MCN State 52 to10 and going into this matchup it's hey FCS opponent pretty overmatched can't can't take too much away from a game like this and you know coming out of the game you feel similar right not a lot of big picture takeaways that that you can have but probably the biggest one would be how Connor wigman responded from a poor performance against Notre Dame last week you know you you look at that performance a whole lot went wrong for Connor wigman struggled with his accuracy struggled with his footwork wasn't setting his feet wasn't stepping into throws was missing guys was inaccurate whole bunch of problems right and again it's MCN State it's an FCS team but Conor wigman for the most part played a pretty nice game he led the team to five straight touchdown drives before coming out of the game with a couple minutes left in the in the second quarter and you know was 11 for 14 125 yards two touchdowns um and really besides one throw you know three incompletions but two of them were drops so probably only one throw that you could look at and say yeah okay that deserved to be incomplete you know he had the really nice back shoulder throw to Noah Thomas for a 15 yd touchdown he had the the touchdown to Moose which was nice to see and um you know was he perfect no you know held the ball a little too long than I would have liked you could maybe blame that on the receivers not creating as much separation as you would have liked and certainly a lot of slow developing routes that you could look at for this offense and kind of say hey how can you make it a little bit more simpler from for wigman right how do you roll them out a little bit more how do you you have these quick you know high percentage throws that you can build into these this offense that could certainly be something you look at but you know mechanically right seemed to be setting his feet a lot better seemed to be stepping in the throws you know he he used his legs a couple times to get some pretty nice games pretty nice gains and again not much more you can ask for five for five five touchdowns and and really it felt like A&M was leaning on the Run quite a bit when wigman was at quarterback you know they they start off the game leevon Moss has a couple huge runs and they score a touchdown Leon Moss had nine carries today but it had him for 87 yards and really like what he's done so far this season uh it's clear understanding why he uh won the starting running back job right but um anyway this run game over 300 yards rushing not much more to say I think Amari Daniels had an awesome game uh I think he's really establishing himself as the the the number two back um you know but offensively again I thought the starting offense looked really great uh then you brought Marcel Reed in and man this wind I'm telling you right now it's not making my hair look good so so please bear with me but um our re comes in about 2 minutes left in the first half and you know a little bit up and down right you know had some inaccurate throws but also showed you why hey this was a four-star kid that is an incredible athlete and not only can extend plays but really slippery in the open field and and can use his legs to get huge gains on the ground and so you know I look at a guy like Marcel Reed it was clear that he became the QB QB 2 in preseason camp he showed enough to surpass Jaylen Henderson but all the talk this week coming out of that Notre Dame game was Hey what if Marell Reed came in against Notre Dame did they win that game or hey should he be the starter going forward and when we talked to Mike OKO on Monday the sentiment he shared was come on guys you guys have seen 70 plays you guys meaning the fan base and I've seen 1,70 plays all off seon you know leading up to this game so the notion that oh well it's as simple as Marcel Reed replacing Conor wigman and then this offense is just going to take off I didn't agree with that I I agreed with Mike Elko in that hey Conor wigman is clearly the best guy in this room did he have a bad game absolutely but Marcel Reed from everything I've heard future is right no doubt about it but it's not quite there yet still has more development to do you know he's just a red shirt freshman and I feel like the perception on him is a little distorted because of hey he had a great Texas Bull performance against Oklahoma State he was awesome in the spring game uh but then you look at it and you say well Oklahoma state had one of the best had one of the worst secondaries in the country last year and he was facing twos and threes on the defense in the spring game and was running with the you know mostly the first team offense so you not to diminish what he did but just to act like he's already this clear-cut starter who's better than wigman I just don't agree with it now again Marcel Reed have really liked that guy's future I think man if he bulks up a little bit more if he tightens up his mechanics and and and kind of works on his accuracy a little bit more I I mean I I think he could be a really good quarterback here in a year or two but right now he's I don't think he he's the best option in this group and so this I think today not many people can disagree with that based on what we saw um and it kind of quieted those who were calling for you know wigman to get to get benched now at the same time if you're Conor wigman you can't feel comfortable because going in the next week you're going to the swamp you're playing at Florida and I I'm not going to say it's a short leash for him but if he has another performance like he did at Notre Dame you cannot continue to just expect that hey he's going to get it together I felt like today he responded well but the real test is next week and if he plays as poorly as he did at Notre Dame that's when you consider A Change Is that the second time it happens in a second big game it happens it's one thing to have a great performance against mcne state but if you stink it up the joint once again it's hard to argue that that you shouldn't be bench so that's kind of the way I see it with this quarterback room Conor wigman's the best guy until he isn't right he's the best guy unless you know all those issues we saw against Notre Dame show up again and you know talking about wigman I mean it seems like what happened last week was was a mental thing right coming off a big injury first game in a in almost a year and hyped up crowds season opener Notre Dame just seemed like it kind of got to him and now that he's settled in is he is he you know poised enough to handle an environment like Florida or we are we going to see some of those same same issues show up so that'll be the big question heading into next week and you know flipping over the defense I I felt like again a lot of the Yards a lot of the you know first downs that M State got it was against the second team third team fourth team defense can you take a whole lot from that probably not would you wish that the the third string defensive tackles and D ends did a little bit better against the Run yeah no no doubt about it but I don't know if that's going to be a sign of anything that's to come I do wish we would have seen a little bit more of a pass rush yet again no sacks for Texas A&M uh we did see two big plays from this secondary will Lee had the pick off of a off of a tip and uh and Mar Marcus Ratcliffe had the uh interception uh when uh Solomon the shields uh hit the quarterback and it kind of kind of messed up his throw so you know won the turnover battle two to nothing last week they lost it two to nothing and we saw how that impacted this team so good to see this group get some turnovers look last year this secondary was not very good at generating turnovers and really good at giving up big plays and to see them not only generate a couple turnovers but also back toback weeks not giving up much at all right Leonard had 158 yards passing last week and MCN State this week combined for 99 passing yards so the couple interceptions in the mix I would think that this secondary is going to rank pretty high highly coming out of this game as far as passing efficiency d goes um you know Florida next week I look at that game and it's a first year coach in Mike Elco but you just get the sense said that game is going to mean so much for this program you know going into that game they still have a 10 game losing streak that dates back a few years on the road they have not won on the road we saw what happened at Miami last year Tennessee Old Miss LSU it got ugly at times and it also felt like they lost some winnable games and so can they beat a team that they should beat on the road I I think we'll say a lot about this team um you also could talk about hey if you lose to Florida you know you might be looking at a s and five six and six kind of year because Florida has a you know you can make a case that they're like the sixth or seventh best team on this schedule I mean I I'd put Missouri and Texas and Notre Dame over them I'd put LSU over them and I might put Auburn over them as far as quality of an opponent so this is a game that A&M should win and I know it's on the road they should be favored and you know this week is interesting for Florida because they you know lose Graham Merz for the game and they're bringing in DJ lway former A&M Target uh so we'll see if his performance Saturday can can give this team a boost off of their loss uh to Miami but anyway I think that game could really Define this season if A&M sets the tone wins a nice game on the road ends that streak they could kind of prove hey it's different under Mike Elco than it was under Jimbo fer you're going to win the games that you're expected to win you're going to show up on the road a and beat this team right so I think that this game could say a lot about this team obviously coming out of MCN you feel a lot better than you do against Notre Dame but we're going to learn a lot more about this team in the coming weeks there's still a lot to learn I think about the yaggies uh and so should be a fun week ahead I'll be there in Gainesville so looking forward to it going to be at Disney World next Friday so if y if y'all are there uh come say hi but that's all for me today here at Kyle Field and thanks for watching