Aggies maul Tigers with dominating second half

BATON ROUGE, LA. — Texas A&M hadn’t won at LSU in three decades. The beating they put on the Tigers in Death Valley Saturday might still be stinging three decades from now.

“The last time we won here, I was the starting point guard on my high school basketball team,” coach Mike Elko said.

After a self-sabotaging first half, the Aggies (8-0, 5-0 SEC) exploded for 35 unanswered points in the second half to crush LSU (5-3, 2-3 SEC) 49-26 before 101,924 largely infuriated fans in what could be the death knell for Brian Kelly in Baton Rouge.

A&M jumped out to 7-0 and 14-7 leads courtesy of spectacular plays from Aggie quarterback Marcel Reed. His first score was a 41-yard scramble after he rolled to his right hoping to find a receiver deep, then saw a massive hole in the middle of the LSU line and took off. After making two defenders miss inside the 5-yard line, Reed (12-21, 202 yards, 2 TD, 2 INT passing; 13 carries, 108 yards, 2 TD) walked in for A&M’s longest scoring run of the year.

“(The LSU defenders) saw me running; I was looking at them the whole time. I thought, ‘I can beat ‘em to the corner,’” Reed said. “I started losing a little bit of gas, so I had to change direction.”

LSU would respond on their next drive, but Reed marched the Aggies down the field, finishing a 10-play, 75-yard drive with a 15-yard bullet to KC Concepcion (3 catches, 49 yards, 1 TD). A&M went into the second quarter up 14-7 before awaking the demons that inhabit Tiger Stadium at night.

Tigers capitalize on Aggies’ second quarter blunders

After a quick LSU drive that included Cashius Howell’s second sack of the night, the Aggies looked like they were in prime position to put the game away. But an early snap by center Mark Nabou surprised both Reed and running back Rueben Owens, leading to an 11-yard loss back to the A&M 16. After near interception on one play and a near safety on the next, punter Tyler White had his second punt of the year blocked for a safety that cut A&M’s lead to 14-9.

The Aggie defense forced another punt, and the offense started another drive that was highlighted by a spinning one-handed catch and run by wideout Ashton Bethel-Roman for 47 yards that got the ball down to the LSU 4-yard line. But the drive would come to naught when Reed was picked off in the end zone by safety A.J. Haulcy.

It looked like A&M was about to get the ball back without any damage done, but corner Dezz Ricks was hit with a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty after the Aggies got a stop on 3rd and 18. That moved the ball out to the LSU 42, and Garrett Nussmeier (22-35, 168 yards, 1 TD) proceeded to hit his biggest pass of the night, a 41-yarder to receiver Barion Brown (4 catches, 60 yards), to move the ball to the Aggie 17. Three plays later, running back Harlem Berry scored from four yards out to put LSU ahead 15-14.

The Tigers would add another three points courtesy of another A&M turnover on the next drive, after a pass from Reed was tipped near the line of scrimmage and was picked off by LSU linebacker Harold Perkins at midfield. LSU would settle for a 30-yard Damien Ramos field goal and took an 18-14 lead into the locker room at halftime.

In the Aggie locker room, Elko was very direct with his players.

“I said, You’re the better team, but you have to play better football, and if you don’t play better football, you’re going to let one slip away tonight,” he said. “When you write up a script of how to go win in in a hostile environment, we don’t give up a blocked punt, you don’t turn the ball over twice, you don’t miss tackles, you don’t commit a personal foul penalty that extends a drive that leads to points.”

Reed remembered it slightly differently.

“Elko definitely said some things. I can’t remember exactly what, but it was aggressive, though, for sure,” he said. “We were just kicking ourselves in the butt in the first half.”

Concepcion applies the dagger with punt return

That quickly changed after halftime, as Terry Bussey returned the second half kickoff to the Aggie 45-yard line. A&M then proceeded to run the ball eight times on a nine-play drive, capped off by Reed’s second scoring touchdown of the day from five yards out.

At that point, the Aggies not only had a 21-18 lead, but were preparing the blow the doors off the Tigers in an epic third quarter that rivaled last year’s explosion at Kyle Field.

LSU would go three and out on their drive, which ended with defensive tackle DJ Hicks leading a swarm of Aggies into the backfield to sack Nussmeier. 

“He got in a little bit of a rhythm on that first score drive for them, and in order to get him out of that rhythm we had to pressure him and I thought we did a really good job of that,” Elko said.

The next play would prove to be the one that broke the back of the Tigers and the mystique of Death Valley at night.

Punter Grant Chadwick boomed a 60-yard punt that appeared to pin Concepcion near the left sideline at the A&M 21. But Concepcion stayed in bounds, headed up the sideline with what little room he had to work with, then cut back towards the center of the field at the A&M 40. He then ran diagonally across the field and to the end zone for a sensational 79-yard return.

“I made a concern going into halftime about going and getting a stop defensively. However, then we had a three and out, then the punt return touchdown,” LSU coach Brian Kelly said.

The punt return for a score, Concepcion’s second of the season, impressed his coach as much as it put Kelly into despair.

“He’s an extremely talented kid with the ball in his hands, and so I think we’ve seen that quite a few times this year, with his ability to do that, those kids are blocking really hard for him, because they know if we can just get him a little bit of space, he’s going to go,” Elko said.

On LSU’s next drive, the Aggies were able to force the Tigers to punt on 4th and 2 from their own 26, which drew loud boos from the restive Tiger Stadium crowd. A&M got the ball at midfield after Bussey’s muff was recovered by Bravion Rogers, then proceeded to get a little help from the home team to keep their drive moving. On 3rd and 2 from the LSU 42, Owens (8 carries, 49 yards) ran for 8 yards and a first down, but a defensive holding penalty on LSU defensive tackle Bernard Gooden tacked on 10 more. One play later, Reed found running back Jamarion Morrow (3 carries, 26 yards, 1 TD; 1 catch, 24 yards, 1 TD) on a simple screen pass that became an untouched 24-yard touchdown and sent large portions of the LSU faithful to the exits with 4:02 remaining in the third quarter.

Aggies pour it on in the fourth quarter

Unfortunately for the LSU fans who stayed, the Tigers went three and out and the Aggies went on still another scoring drive. This one, which put A&M up 41-18, was capped off by a 1-yard dive by tight end Nate Boerkircher, who lined up in the backfield and got the carry while LSU was not only offsides, but had 12 men on the field.

By this point the Aggies had started to tee off on Nussmeier, sacking him five times and knocking him to the turf many more. 

“It’s super fun (to get after the quarterback),” Hicks said. “It’s really a culture, really a brotherhood. So that really just makes it fun to see my brothers eat, and for I know, for them as well, to see me eat too.”

The Aggies weren’t quite done devouring the Tigers, as they would score one more time on an 11-yard run by Morrow with 6:12 left in the game. LSU would get a garbage touchdown on a stellar catch by Kyle Parker from backup quarterback Michael Van Buren with less than a minute left, but all that remained was for the now-largely A&M crowd to chant “8-0” as time expired. 

With the Aggies now 5-0 in the SEC for the first time in program history and 8-0 for the first time since George H.W. Bush was president, a lot of echoes from the past have been silenced by A&M’s winning streak. Elko said he hoped the past can be put to bed entirely.

“Can we stop worrying about the past, thinking about the past, talking about the past? I’m excited for what this team is doing right now. This team is doing some really special things,” he said. “I think we should enjoy it. I think we should stop focusing on last year. I think … I answered three questions on our Wednesday media call about last year. I just I don’t understand why we can’t just enjoy what’s happening. We should enjoy what’s happening.”

With his Aggies putting an epic beating on LSU and knocking a preseason top-10 team likely out of the rankings entirely, Elko got the last word. When reminded that LSU was 20-1 in night games under Kelly, his former boss, he quickly interrupted.

“20-2,” he said.