The Aggies will most certainly benefit more from the time off here after they went through a brutal schedule which many sources had as the third toughest schedule. I had them with the 3rd most difficult schedule and West Virginia at #40. A&M had a tough physical game they won against Arkansas, and then they played three top 5 ranked teams in Ole Miss, Miss State and Alabama. All 3 were top 25 run defenses and play a physical brand of football. They had 13 days off played LA Monroe, and went on the road to beat a top 5 Auburn team at the time showing that they still have the talent to compete with anyone in the country. They finished up the season against Missouri and LSU who were two of the better teams in the country.

The SEC East was the best division in football that we have ever seen in my opinion and it can wear you down, but now with time to prepare we will see Texas A&M and Kevin Sumlin at his best. Sumlin is a very good coach who is 3-1 in bowl games and even blew out the Big 12 in the 2012 Cotton Bowl. He's got Kyle Allen at QB a highly touted recruit who was playing his best, but the biggest key will be whether or not A&M can run the ball. In their wins this year they averaged 5.45 ypc and 3.14 in losses. Lucky enough they face a West Virginia defense they should be able to run on with their speed. You could say the same about West Virginia who also needs to run the ball and A&M's defense has definitely struggled, but the fact that West Virginia will start a QB with less experience and A&M certainly has the pass rush to get after Skyler Howard who faced Kansas State and Iowa State ranked 90th and 121st in pass rush. A&M was ranked 18th in sack % and will force mistakes in this game as West Virginia was -15 in turnover margin this year with 28 lost.

A&M will also enjoy a nice special teams advantage as their punter averages 44.5 and the West Virginia return game is among the worst at 3.24 yards per return ranking 124th.


Clemson arguably has the best front 7 in football and they face an Oklahoma team that is getting healthy at the right time, but I can't see Oklahoma really being excited about this bowl game as they were expected to do a lot more this year. The one thing that does concern me about this match up is how good Oklahoma's left side of the offensive line is, but they haven't done very well when going up against top run defenses going 0-3 when facing a top 30 run defense while Clemson is in the top 10. Clemson's defense is also #1 in yards per play allowed and it's not just because the ACC is down this year. They also faced Georgia and South Carolina out of the SEC. We saw South Carolina defeat Miami just a day ago. Clemson won't have their star QB but they have won all year with defense and I don't see Trevor Knight lighting up the scoreboard after being out for over a month.

Where to find Freddy?