A&M seems pretty happy to be out of UT's shadow in the SEC.
They had a good year in football.
Guarantee you they wouldn't have done better than 8-4 if they were in the Big 12. A lot of people forget that Aggie gave up 57 points to Louisiana Tech last year. LT runs a pass heavy spread offense (just checked the box score, they threw 59 times vs Aggie). Any defense that isn't Coal Aggie bad can hold the horrible, bland offenses in the SEC to 24 points or less. That meant as long as A&M could put up at least four touchdowns, they would win since SEC offenses are WITB.
The three highest points surrendered by Aggie last year were LT (57), Missouri (29) and Sam Houston State (28). A Sun Belt team, a Big 12 castoff and a 1AA team did better against the Aggie defense than every team in the SEC. Remember how many shootouts Aggie lost in 2011? Same thing would have happened to them in the Big 12 in 2012. They wouldn't have lost as many since Sumlin is a much better coach than Sherman but the way they lose games is either their offense is contained or they get in a shootout. Manziel was shut down early on against Florida and LSU but as the year went on he improved.
I wouldn't be surprised if A&M won the SEC West this year. Outside of Alabama and LSU they don't play anybody else who is capable of shutting down their offense. SEC defenses look surprisingly average when they don't get 6 weeks to prepare for the best offense they're going to see all season, so I'm going to give Aggie the advantage over both those teams. They don't play anyone else with an offense that can keep up with them.
