Texas A&M: That Other Good SEC Team

Looking for a team that could challenge Alabama in the SEC? After preseason dark horses LSU and Tennessee struggled to start the season, it looked like it would be the Crimson Tide sitting head and shoulders above everybody else in the SEC.

But suddenly—after squeezing out an overtime victory against Tennessee—Texas A&M has emerged as a legitimate College Football Playoff contender.

The Aggies were pretty much left for dead earlier this season after a miserable offseason, which saw two former five-star quarterbacks transfer and left many people around college football assuming that coach Kevin Sumlin would be fired. Now, all of the sudden, A&M is 6-0 with an impressive group of wins against Tennessee, Arkansas, and UCLA.

There's still a lot of season to play, with the toughest games—Alabama, Ole Miss, and LSU—still to come, but Sumlin has his team knocking on the door of the top five, and in realistic contention for the College Football Playoff. That's a stunning turnaround, even for the most optimistic Aggies supporters.

Perhaps most impressive is that the Aggies aren't winning because of one star player. Even in its best season under Sumlin—the 10-2 season with Johnny Manziel in 2012—A&M had a lot of flaws, but was able to cover them up with Manziel's greatness. This year, the Aggies' quarterback play has been truly average.

Quarterback Trevor Knight, a transfer from Oklahoma, came into this game with a measly 122.11 quarterback rating, ranked 87th in the country. He ranks 78th with seven yards per attempt. He is not a very good quarterback. But despite Knight, it's impossible to say A&M doesn't deserve to be 6-0 at this point. That's a testament to all of the solid recruiting Sumlin has done—five-star talent that is finally living up to its potential at the best time possible.

The defense, which used to be the Aggies' kryptonite, ranks 20th nationally in efficiency, according to Football Outsiders, and will likely improve after shutting down the Vols. It's a defense chock full of future NFL stars—Myles Garrett, Justin Evans, and Armani Watts, to name a few—that now won't be known for underachieving on a team that should never played up to its talent level.

On offense, the Aggies are known for their passing game, and weapons like Christian Kirk and Josh Reynolds have helped them maintain consistency through Knight's clear limitations. But the running game has an impressive young core, including freshman Trayveon Williams, who is averaging more than nine yards per attempt.

Texas A&M is probably not going to win the SEC West, because Alabama is one of the two best teams in college football and because Ole Miss and LSU still pose significant threats. But the Aggies are finally playing to their potential after years of being known as a team that can only recruit, not produce results.