Texas vs. Texas A&M: Longhorns Don't Have Enough Offense to Hang with Aggies

Whatever you do, make sure you enjoy tonight's tilt between the Texas Longhorns and Texas A&M Aggies. There's a very good chance we'll never see these two teams play each other again.

A little odd seeing as how the Longhorns and Aggies have been playing continuously since the days of the Grover Cleveland administration. Their rivalry is as old as the Texas dirt, and it will be missed.

Oh well. I've already bashed these two schools for the part they played in killing their great rivalry. Come to think of it, I've already made a pick for this game as well.

The Aggies are going to win 28-14. Count on it.

But it's why the Aggies are going to win that I want to talk about in greater depth here. They're going to win because they're the home team, and they're going to win because their offense is not going to let them down.

Texas' own offense, on the other hand, is going to let it down. In order to beat Texas A&M, the Longhorns are going to have to keep pace with them offensively, and I don't think the Longhorns are going to be able to do that.

Texas' biggest problem in this game will be their inability to exploit Texas A&M's biggest weakness: its pass defense. The Aggies rank 118th out of 120 FBS schools in passing defense, and have been mercilessly lit up by greats like Brandon Weeden, Tyler Wilson and Robert Griffin III.

The Longhorns have no greats at the quarterback position. Mack Brown is forced to pick his poison with David Ash and Case McCoy, the younger brother of former Texas great Colt McCoy. Under their watch, the Longhorns have the nation's 96th-ranked passing offense, a big reason why they rank 53rd in the nation in scoring.

I'm going to assume that Ash and McCoy aren't going to show much improvement on Thursday night, even against a pass defense as utterly atrocious as Texas A&M's. They are not going to do some sort of Double Dragon thing and turn into a formidable duo.

The Aggies can be thankful for that. Since they don't have to worry about Texas piling up points, they can afford to use a more conservative game plan, which should come in handy seeing as how Ryan Tannehill doesn't always play mistake-free football.

The only way the Aggies are losing this game is if the Longhorns put up a brick wall on defense and force the Aggies to play the game on their level. I suppose that could happen, but I don't think it will. As good as Texas is on defense, the Aggies have too much offense to be held down for an entire game.

So, in the end, the Aggies will win, and that will be that. Maybe the Longhorns will have a better offense the next time these two teams meet up.

Oh...wait. Never mind.