Notes On A&M's Sunday Scrimmage

First, some stats:

• Jerrod Johnson: 8-12 passing, 120 yards, 36 yds rushing
• Cyrus Gray : 3 carries for 77 yds.
• Christine Michael: 9 carries for 56 yds, 2 TDs
• Bradley Stephens: 6 carries for 49 yds, 2 TDs
• Howard Morrow: 3 receptions, 65 yds

• Ryan Tannehill: 2-5 passing, 44 yds
• Tommy Dorman: 4-7, 32 yds, 1 TD

My first reaction on reading these stats is that it looks like our offense had no problem running the ball, which would seem to be a good sign for our offensive line. Then I read this:

The Aggie defense forced several three-and-outs and totaled 11 sacks on the afternoon.

Yeah, that doesn't sound too good. Ricky Cavanaugh, Matt Moss, and Kyle Mangan each had two sacks each. Von Miller had 1 1/2 sacks in limited action. Giving up eleven sacks is horrific, there is no other way to look at that. Given how well we were running the ball, I am left to wonder if they were selling out to stop the passing game, at the expense of the running game. It sounds to me like our defense pinned their ears back and just attacked relentlessly, which means we'll have a chance to make some plays in the running game.

Sherman seems happy with some of the results of practice, particularly Jerrod's play:

"Jerrod had a good day," Sherman said. "He ran the ball when he had to take off and run, and he threw it when he had guys open. We dropped a few balls today that we have to catch, that would have been big plays. But overall I was pleased with the performance."

While I am happy to see we seem to be making some progress on defense and on offense as far as having difference makers making plays, we seem to be lacking consistency on either side of the ball, if these stats are any indication. Neither side seems to be able to exert its will over the other one, which means instead of dealing with one unit that has a slight edge over the other, we're dealing with two units that are prone to flashes of greatness inbetween costly mistakes.

It is important to note that we didn't let firsts go against firsts, and the units were a collection of first, second, and third teamers all playing with and against each other, so we can't read too much into the results of our first scrimmage of the Fall.