Though the affair started with a misty-eyed Senior Day ceremony, No. 3 Texas A&M football finished 7-0 at home for the first time in school history after a 48-0 pummeling of Samford that showcased the difference in quality between an undefeated Southeastern Conference leader and a 1-10 FCS team. Before the typical pyrotechnics and blaring of Ye’s “POWER,” there was a more quaint celebration, as A&M honored 36 Aggies on its Senior Day. The players came out one at a time to cheers from the 12th Man, shared smiles with loved ones and a brief embrace from coach Mike Elko. “They’ll forever have shaped the culture at Texas A&M for this era of Texas A&M football,” Elko said. “That’s a legacy that no matter how this thing ends, they’ll take with them. Now they’ve got much bigger aspirations about how they want to end this thing.” Senior Day success With redshirt sophomore quarterback Marcel Reed coming out and leading three touchdown drives in rapid succession, Elko turned to his seniors in an attempt to give them an opportunity to make one last play on the Kyle Field grass. “It was great to see some of our young players get out and get opportunities,” Elko said. “ . And then at the end to be able to get a lot of seniors on the field and make sure they finished their career with opportunities to play on Kyle.” Senior running back Amari Daniels made his last regular-season game at Kyle Field count, reaching a career high in single-game rushing yards before the teams went into the locker rooms at halftime. After falling down the depth chart this season due to the emergence of other weapons, Daniels wound back the clock for 106 yards and an exclamation-point touchdown. “It was really important to our staff to get him in the end zone,” Elko said. “It was great to see him go over 100 yards. He means a lot to Texas A&M football, he means a lot to this staff. I know it hasn’t been everything he hoped it would be his senior year, but you know, he continues to battle. I’m sure at some point that name is going to pop up in a meaningful game.” Though not a senior, true junior wide receiver KC Concepcion was featured heavily in the handful of drives he was in, reeling in five balls for 42 yards and a touchdown on eight targets. The likely NFL Draft pick also continued his special teams excellence by slaloming for a 39-yard punt return. The famed 12th Man kickoff team made a brief appearance in the dying embers of the first half, with junior safety Isaiah Willis chasing down graduate student kicker Randy Bond’s squib kick for his first career tackle as the crowd roared its approval. Even graduate student QB Jacob Zeno got in on the action in the fourth quarter. The UAB transfer made his first appearance of his seventh season of collegiate ball, passing for 27 yards on a drive finished off by a 2-yard touchdown by fellow senior RB Preston Landis. Samford struggles If you are reading this, you had more passing yards than Samford did in the first half. That was the kind of day it was for the Bulldogs. It started with negative passing yards in the first half and ended with 77 total yards of offense and a goose egg on the scoreboard the first time A&M has held an opponent under 100 yards of offense since 1996 and the first time the Aggies have pitched a shutout since 2022. With the Samford offensive line overmatched against an A&M pass rush that led the nation in sacks entering Week 13, offensive coordinator Ricky Turner resorted to a hodgepodge of screen passes and wildcat snaps to generate offense or at least tried to. The reliance on screens nearly resulted in the shortest touchdown of redshirt senior cornerback Tyreek Chappell’s career when he jumped a bubble as the Bulldogs were backed up on their own goal line, but the ball squirted through his hands and fell incomplete. Sophomore QB Quincy Crittendon went 1-for-7 for -2 yards in the first half as the Bulldogs failed to pick up a single first down. The rushing game wasn’t much better, mustering 27 yards on a less-than-ideal 1. 7 yards per tote. The Bulldogs’ offense exploded in the second half, gaining 51 yards on its second drive of the third quarter. Turner dove into his bag to jumpstart the drive, pulling out a hook and ladder to gain 27. Unfortunately for Samford, its best chance at points resulted in a blocked field goal that was returned 41 yards. Samford’s day ended with 77 total yards and 0-14 on third-down conversions, punctuated by a wet fart of a field-goal attempt to erase the shutout in the final minutes, only for the ball to hook wide left. Next generation While it is hard to look past the magic carpet ride of a season the Maroon and White are on and certainly not past next week’s date with No. 17 Texas the Aggie Faithful peeked through the keyhole of A&M’s future when many underclassmen entered the game in the second half. “There’s been times in the past where maybe we haven’t taken this game the right way, and we’ve had guys take the field almost like those reps didn’t mean anything,” Elko said. “Every time you get the opportunity to play, you get the opportunity to grow.” In a game that saw A&M tie its season high in tackles for loss with 11, freshman defensive end Marco Jones led the way with seven total tackles and one tackle for loss. Redshirt freshman QB Miles O’Neill made his seventh appearance in relief for the Aggies, coming in for Reed during the second quarter. The big-bodied backup floundered, short-arming a deep ball to sophomore WR Terry Bussey for an interception and passing for only 19 yards. While one quarterback disappointed relative to expectations, freshman QB Brady Hart shined in his first extended run of action. Hart led two drives into the red zone, and while he didn’t punch it in, he threw for 62 yards and ran for another nine. In huge news for nominative determinism believers, freshman RB Tiger Riden Jr. clawed his way to 45 yards on the ground and scored his first career touchdown, inciting a huge celebration in the end zone. “That was lovely,” Daniels said on seeing Landis and Riden score. “Because them guys, they look up to us, the older guys in the room and seeing how they change their mistakes and learn from them and how they grow every day.” After last year’s defeat at the hands of Texas, the Aggies will make a trip to Austin for a pseudo playoff game against the Longhorns at 6: 30 p. m. on Friday, Nov. 28, with a ticket to Atlanta for the SEC Championship on the line for the Maroon and White. “Not only that game, but how we finished last year put a spark under us,” Daniels said. “The word in the offseason was ‘Finish,’ we knew this year we had a team to go all the way, and all we got to do now is finish.”.
https://thebatt.com/sports/senior-day-shutout-aggies-finish-7-0-at-home-for-first-time-in-school-history/