Texas A&M Football: ESPN FPI thrusts Aggies into playoff conversation

Most every Texas A&M football fan has lofty expectations for the future of their program. Wy wouldn’t they? The Aggies are coming off a 9-1 season in which they won the Orange Bowl and finished No. 4 in the national polls. They’ve got the $100 Million coach, tremendous facilities and have stacked successive impressive recruiting classes on top of each other.

Simply put, Texas A&M has done almost everything it can reasonably do to position itself in line with the college football elite. And now those aspirations are being crystalized into finite, discernable data.

ESPN has released its Football Power Index (FPI) for the 2021 season, a metric essentially aimed at predicting how good any given team will be. Texas A&M is No. 6 nationally and No. 2 in the SEC behind only Alabama (No. 1).

Texas A&M football better in 2021 than 2020?

Going further still, the numbers suggest Texas A&M is expected to be better in 2021 than they were in 2020, raising their FPI from 18.1 to 19.7. The 2021 team will be without four starting offensive linemen, defensive tackle Bobby Brown, linebacker Buddy Johnson and quarterback Kellen Mond. Those players were fixtures of the 2020 roster who paved the way for the stalwart season. And Texas A&M could be even better without them?

The results on the field in the fall will ultimately determine whether or not the Aggies have made the leap from good to great and ascended to the plateau of the college football giants. But during the offseason, when all we have to work with is data and projections, everything is coming up roses for Texas A&M football. And that’s a good place to start.