Texas A&M Shows Growth, Is Still in Hunt for SEC West Despite Loss to Alabama

Admit it: When Eddie Jackson returned a Kyle Allen interception 93 yards for a touchdown midway through the second quarter to put Alabama up 28-6 on Saturday afternoon at Kyle Field in College Station, Texas, you thought the game was over.

You thought Texas A&M's hopes of winning the SEC West were over.

After all, it was Allen's second of three pick-sixes on the afternoon, and Crimson Tide running back Derrick Henry had already rushed 10 times for 159 yards and two touchdowns, making the Aggies defense look foolish in the process.

But a funny thing happened in the second half: The Aggies defense showed back up.

The unit that looked dead and gone in the first half finished the afternoon with 15 tackles for loss, held Henry in check—he finished with 236 total rushing yards, including 28 on the final drive in garbage time—and allowed Allen and the Aggies offense to at least claw back into the game and mount a challenge to the Crimson Tide before falling 41-23.

The combination of the Aggies defensive front coming of age and Crimson Tide center Ryan Kelly leaving the game shortly before halftime helped the Aggies fight back as USA Today's George Schroeder noted on Twitter.

The highlight of the afternoon for the Aggies defense was defensive tackle Daylon Mack blowing up the offensive line and meeting Henry at the ball.

The defense got punched in the mouth, staggered and threw haymakers back at Alabama to at least make it interesting.

The days of the Aggies defense being soft, undisciplined and poorly coached are gone thanks to the arrival of Mack, the progression of defensive end Myles Garrett—who had two tackles for loss and a blocked punt on the afternoon—and the arrival of new defensive coordinator John Chavis.

Are the Aggies flawed? 

Absolutely. 

Running back Tra Carson couldn't get going on the ground and finished the day with 46 rushing yards and a long of just six. That was due in part to Alabama's stout front seven and the fact that A&M was trying to dig out of a whole from virtually the opening kickoff.

Scott Halleran/Getty Images

Allen is a liability, too.

Those three pick-sixes were backbreakers, and he was erratic all afternoon, finishing 20-of-40 with just one touchdown pass. But as Aubrey Bloom of the Bryan-College Station Eagle noted on Twitter, not all of those mistakes were on Allen—including the final pick-six of the afternoon in the fourth quarter by Alabama defensive back Minkah Fitzpatrick.

That's not ideal.

But if A&M's going to have a flaw, that flaw being anything other than its defense is still tremendous progress from where the program was over the last couple of seasons. The Aggies showed tremendous progress against the Crimson Tide.

The Aggies are down after falling to the Tide, but they aren't out as tackle Julien Obioha told TexAgs.com after the game.

That's not 100 percent true, but it's not false either.

The loss drops the Aggies (5-1, 2-1 SEC), despite tying Alabama (6-1, 3-1 SEC) in the loss column in the conference. 

Sure, Alabama has the tiebreaker with the Aggies in hand, but it doesn't have the tiebreaker with Ole Miss which also has one loss in the conference. All three of those schools have undefeated LSU on the schedule. 

This would likely have been an elimination game for Alabama had it lost, but instead, it just made the muddled SEC West even murkier.

Buckle up. The next month-and-a-half in the ever-changing SEC West is going to be a wild ride.

Quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. Recruiting information is courtesy of 247Sports. Statistics are courtesy of cfbstats.com. 

Barrett Sallee is the lead SEC college football writer and national college football video analyst for Bleacher Report as well as a host on Bleacher Report Radio on SiriusXM 83. Follow Barrett on Twitter @BarrettSallee.