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Miami beat Texas A&M on Saturday afternoon in College Station, Texas.
I wrote for Saturday morning’s newsletter I thought the best outcome for Ohio State was probably TAMU pulling out a close one in front of its home crowd.
The implication was I think Miami is the better team so the Aggies would not be able to just outright beat them.
That would also mean the Buckeyes would rather play the Aggies even though that would mean another de facto road game at the Cotton Bowl in Arlington, Texas.
Well, after watching them play each other, I still feel that way, though I waffled a bit at times.
Let’s take a closer look…(after the first ad break)
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I have to admit: That game looks closer on the stat sheet than it felt watching it.
Texas A&M actually ended up with 48 more total yards thanks to its frantic final drive, but Miami averaged more yards per play (5.7 to 4.3).
Overall, Miami just seemed to have a few more DUDES.
The Aggies also had a higher offensive success rate (32%, which is not good, compared to Miami’s 24%, which is really bad) and a higher rushing success rate (43 to 35).
But the Hurricanes had nine tackles for loss, including seven sacks, and two interceptions. Their offense also won the explosive-play battle 9-5, including seven runs of 10 yards or more.
That means Texas A&M was very competitive on a play-to-play basis but got swamped by big plays going both ways…
It seemed like Miami had more bona fide chances to score thanks to the three missed field goals, but both teams crossed midfield six times.
The Aggies had their chances: They had three trips inside the Miami red zone that yielded three points.
Miami scored on two of its three red zone opportunities, including the game-winning touchdown with 1:44 to go.
So much like the Big Ten Championship Game, red zone efficiency was the difference in the game.
Miami has elite edge rushers who will challenge the Ohio State tackles, but Reuben Bain Jr. and Akheem Mesidor aren’t the only ones who can get after the quarterback. They had a combined 4.5 sacks, but nickel safety Keionte Scott had two more and forced a fumble.
Pro Football Focus has high grades for just about every Miami defensive regular (if you’re into that sort of thing, which is understandable if you’re not), and they have a lot of guys who look the part — big, fast and athletic.
Of course an Ohio State-Miami matchup also has a few more #narratives than OSU-TAMU would have.
The Buckeyes and Hurricanes have played in the postseason before, as you might have heard, and they happen to recruit a lot of the same players.
That includes two Miami starters — running back Mark Fletcher Jr. and defensive tackle Justin Scott — who were long-time Ohio State commits before flipping to the Hurricanes.
Fletcher showed why on Saturday. He had 172 yards on 17 carries, including a 56-yarder in the fourth quarter that broke the stalemate set up Malachi Toney’s game-winning touchdown run.
Losing Scott was seen as a bigger crisis than losing Taylor at the time because he was a legitimate DT prospect not from the South, but Ohio State is in pretty good shape on the defensive line.
However, Fletcher would be Ohio State’s best running back if he were wearing scarlet and gray…
There will be time to dig deeper into the history between these teams and this matchup as it gets closer, but I thought I would go ahead and follow up my Saturday post after watching that first-round game.
(Plus my awesome newsletter host, Beehiiv, has made a bunch of ads available for me to include in these newsletters, so I wanted to be sure and take advantage of that. And you can help me out by clicking on those babies if you would. I get some compensation if you do. Every little bit helps!)
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And one other note: Upon further review, some of the advanced stats I was looking at from CollegeFootballData.com for my previous post were wrong. I am not sure where things went haywire, but I might have just messed up sorting my spreadsheet.
The biggest discrepancy was in defensive explosiveness. I wrote for Saturday that Miami profiled similar to Indiana on defense because they have a very high success rate but very low explosiveness ranking.
Well, they are 11th in success rate (Indiana is eighth) but also respectable at 71st in explosiveness (Indiana is 117th), so that is not a much boom/bust as I initially might have thought/wrote.
At any rate, there will be time to break things down more between now and New Year’s Eve.
Ohio State has a full day of interviews scheduled for Monday, so you can look for another edition of “The Most Interesting Thing I Heard at Ohio State” after that as well as lots of videos and perhaps another post or two before it’s time to go to Dallas.
I don’t know yet when I’ll publish around Christmas, but you know I can’t go too long without writing something!
As always, thanks again for reading!
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