Down 30-3 at halftime to South Carolina, No. 3 Texas A&M remained unbeaten, made school and SEC history, stayed on track for the conference championship game and might’ve moved quarterback Marcel Reed to the front of the Heisman Trophy race in storming back for the 31-30 win.
Steadily chipping away at the Gamecocks’ lead, the Aggies went ahead for good on a 4-yard touchdown run by EJ Smith four minutes in the fourth quarter. By that point, the comeback was a foregone conclusion: South Carolina was melting down amid the now-typical A&M second-half barrage.
The 27-point comeback is the largest in school history. Since 2004, SEC teams were 0-286 when trailing by 27 or more points.
Beating the Gamecocks doesn’t change the math in terms of an SEC championship. That path still leads through the Black Friday rivalry against No. 10 Texas and will be impacted by other conference results that determine how many teams end November with one league loss.
But avoiding this pothole maintains the Aggies’ dual avenues to the 12-team tournament. By remaining one of three Bowl Subdivision teams still unbeaten, A&M retains the wiggle room to potentially lose to the Longhorns and again in the SEC championship and still earn an at-large berth with room to spare.
