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Aggies Win Two of Last Three
You could not have drawn up a worse start to the 125th season of Aggie football if you tried. 4 straight losses, including a heartbreaking loss to hated rival NCCU in the annual Aggie-Eagle Classic. A&T had the ball 2nd & Goal with just fourteen seconds remaining, but got hit with a questionable OPI penalty that set the Aggies back to the 13 yard line. Kevin White’s pass was then intercepted by Jakarri Martin II on the next play. This was then followed up the next week by a brutal 42-14 beatdown at the hands of CAA foe Campbell, and suddenly it looked like we were due for a repeat of recent years.
Three games later and that couldn’t be further from the truth. The Aggies sent shockwaves thru the FCS ranks on September 26th with an upset win over the Rhode Island Rams, who were ranked 19th in the FCS at the the time. This marked the first win over a top 25 fcs team in A&T history! The Aggies then suffered a 1 point loss in what was essentially a trap game to Bryant. It is always difficult to keep a team focused after a win like the one the Aggies pulled off over URI.
This brings us to this weekend, where we saw the Aggies take down New Hampshire in the confines of Acrisure Stadium in borderline miracle fashion. The Wildcats just finished off a 17 play, 60 yard drive that took over 9 minutes off the clock, leaving A&T just 1:40 to work with. White took the Aggies the length of the field and found Elijah Kennedy for a 19-yard TD that tied the game at 27 on the final play as time expired. UNH was held to a field goal attempt in the OT frame, but missed. Holland did not, and drilled it through the uprights for the win.
The strangest part of all this is that the numbers don’t really look any different. the Aggies typically hover around 350 total yards of offense, usually commit at least one turnover, and the only game where A&T had less penalties than their opponent was against URI. Statistically, there is not one single metric that points to some kind of change within the program. So what changed? The answer is always the same: belief. The Aggies had a few players come in late in the summer, which is likely the cause for such a difficult start to the year.
That said, it is pretty easy to get players to buy in after you get the first ranked win in school history. To me, that seems to be what has happened here in Greensboro. For the first time in years, the energy around Aggie football feels different. People in the city not only are paying attention but talking about this years’ team. There’s hope. A&T football means just about everything to the city of Greensboro.
Up next, the Aggies take on Chicago State, who is in their first season as a football program. Chi State is no pushover. They have put up 21 points on Tarleton State, 20 on Norfolk State, and 28 to Roosevelt College. They also hung 78 on NAIA school Kentucky Christian. This is not a team that the Aggies can afford to take lightly. There is a very real chance the Aggies are heading into GHOE with the potential to get back to .500 against FCS competition for the first time since 2022.
Elon won’t make it easy. The Phoenix are sitting at 4-3 with a 2-2 record in CAA play, the same conference record as A&T. Elon will likely be on a 3 game losing streak, as they make the trip to Palo Alto to play Stanford this week. There is a big time statement opportunity coming for the Aggies, they just need to reach out and take it.
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