Texas A&M hosts FCS member Northwestern State on Thursday night in College Station. Here are your three keys to an Aggie victory over the Demons of Northwestern State.
Take care of business
NWS is an FCS team that won just four games a year ago. Brad Laird will coach his first game as Northwestern State head coach against Texas A&M. NWS averages about 250 pounds on the defensive line. Simply put, this is a game A&M should run away with from the start. The Aggies need to come out and establish early and put the game out of reach by halftime.
Avoid injuries
The worst that could happen is for one of A&M’s key starters to get injured. Even worse would be if a starter was hurt in the fourth quarter with A&M up by 25 points. Then again, in last season’s opener the Aggies led UCLA 44-10 late in the fourth quarter. Most of us know what happened after that point and it wasn’t good if you are an Aggie.
Harass NWS’s quarterbacks
NWS announced that they would play two quarterbacks against A&M on Thursday. Shelton Eppler (6-1, 205, Jr.) is a transfer from Trinity Valley Community College. Clay Holgorsen (6-0, 191, Sr.) played last season completing 109-of-190 passes for 1,240 yards, 9 touchdowns and 6 interceptions. There are two reasons NWS is planning to play two quarterbacks. One reason might be that both these guys are pretty darn good. The other reason could be that neither has played that well in practice. Veteran A&M DE’s Landis Durham and Kingley Keke along with the rest of the A&M defense have a job to find out the reason.
More on NWS
Returning running backs Jared West and Stadford Anderson combined for nearly 600 yards rushing last season. LSU head coach Ed Orgeron is a NWS graduate. He first attended LSU but quit during his first preseason camp. He then transferred to NWS. Northwestern State has 11 victories over FBS teams since 1977. Teams like Boise State, Southern Miss and TCU have fallen to NWS. Most of the wins have come over the non-LSU FBS Louisiana public universities like UL-Monroe and UL-Lafayette.
Thursday’s night’s game kicks off at 7:30 pm CT and can be seen on the SEC Network.
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