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All No. 14 Texas A&M needed was a QB switch to beat No. 8 LSU.
OK, maybe it took a bit more than that. But Aggies coach Mike Elko swapped in Marcel Reed for Conner Weigman in the second half and the Aggies went on a tear on the way to a 38-23 comeback win over the Tigers.
“We needed the running threat back there with the way they were playing us,” Elko said before the fourth quarter on the ABC broadcast.
A&M trailed 17-7 in the third quarter when Elko went to Reed. The switch came after Texas A&M’s BJ Mayes intercepted Garrett Nussmeier and returned the ball to the LSU 8-yard line. A play later, Reed ran it into the end zone and cut the deficit to three.
The Aggies led just over seven minutes later after Reed scored on another 8-yard run. That came after a seven-play, 60-yard drive following another special teams disaster for the Tigers. On a night where kicker Damian Ramos missed two field goals, a miscommunication between the long snapper and holder gave the Aggies the ball and set up that score.
From there, A&M’s defense started forcing turnovers and Reed continued to have the game of his life. Nussmeier threw three second-half interceptions and A&M scored TDs on the first four drives that Reed led.
Reed entered the game after Weigman struggled. The Aggies’ starter had played well since returning from an early season shoulder injury but was not very good on Saturday night. Weigman was just 6-of-18 passing for 64 yards before he was benched. Reed, meanwhile, threw two passes for 70 yards thanks to a 54-yard completion to Noah Thomas.
Before Reed entered the game, LSU’s defense looked like it was continuing the improvement it’s shown over the course of the season. After Reed took the field, LSU looked lost. The Tigers simply had no answer for the extra dimension that Reed showed.
Saturday night was Reed’s best game of the season by far. Reed was far from this spectacular in the three games he started in Weigman’s absence. He failed to throw for more than 178 yards in any of those games and rushed for just 13 yards in his final start against Arkansas. Though he did enough to keep A&M afloat while Weigman was out, there wasn’t much of a controversy when Weigman started against Missouri on Oct. 5.
Texas A&M’s great playoff chances
Saturday’s game pitted the last two unbeaten teams in SEC play against each other. And now A&M has a significant edge over everyone else in the conference standings thanks to the tiebreaker over the Tigers and a very manageable schedule over the final four weeks of the season.
A&M heads to South Carolina on Nov. 2 before visiting Auburn the penultimate week of the season. Yes, No. 5 Texas looms large in the final week of the regular season. But the Aggies could have a spot in the SEC title game wrapped up by then with wins over the Gamecocks and Tigers.
We wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s likely, but wins in Columbia and Auburn are both plausible, even in a very deep SEC. Could everyone else in the SEC be playing for just one spot in the title game over the month of November?