Liveblog! K-State at A&M, Part 2

(See part 1 below, or at this link.)

2:44 Just about back from halftime. Sideline reporter Tom Turkeyville is giving the stats: K-State has 18 first downs, Aggies have 9. That's . . . telling.

2:46 Aggie have the ball, doing OK so far. Goodson started the second half, by the way. I should try to figure out whether he was in trouble, or very mildly injured, or what.

2:47 That Jamie McCoy is pretty good! The Ags keep moving the ball down the field. This is a good drive so far (knock on wood).

2:48 I find the phrase "empty in the backfield" strangely melodious. I love it--"empty in the backfield."

McCoy just got his third catch of the drive, for a first down even! Rack those things up, boys!

2:50 Well, I jinxed McCoy. He dropped one. To be fair, I guess if I'd really jinxed him, it would have been intercepted. Where's some more wood to knock on?!

2:51 Going for it on fourth down again. Gutsy--I like that!

Sounds like it didn't pay off.

Who can tell? Did Jerrod make a first down or not? Dave, Dave, and the refs keep getting confused about things.

2:54 Oh my gosh, they're still reviewing this. In general, I am pro-review, but this particular call is getting ridiculous. It's not even a touchdown question.

2:55 Me, Dave, and Dave don't know what the official just said. I'm not sure it was English syntax. In any case, K-State has the ball now.

2:58 The Tennessee-Georgia game is on our tv right now. They just showed Uga's doghouse--he's got an air conditioner in there! Spoiled.

2:59 I'll admit, I'm not paying attention as closely anymore. Getting a little drowsy. I knew I should have bought two bags of Pixy Stix.

3:00 Dave and Dave have mancrushes on Josh Freeman. Seriously though guys, he doesn't look this good against OK defenses.

3:01 K-State is going for a 50-yard field goal. Again--I'm jealous. He made it, even. They have a kicker who can make a 50-yard field goal! 30-10.

3:04 FYI: Other Dave just said the attendance today is 78,669. So there you go.

3:05 Ugh. Goodson lost 7 yards on his run, and we have an offensive lineman down. We do not have o-linemen to spare!

3:07 Dave: "On second down and a bunch . . ." Indeed, Dave, indeed.

3:08 But on third and ten, voila! A good play! Go, Jerrod! Go, Tannehill! Tannehill is good too. Though it's really easy to get bummed out about the team this year, it's really promising how well a few of the true freshmen are playing. This is why I still think Sherman can turn out to be a good coach. The few guys he got to recruit are some of the brightest spots on the whole team.

3:10 Ooh, Jeff Fuller catches and takes it to the K-State 16. Get those fingers crossed! Knock on that wood! Throw that salt over your shoulder!

3:11 Sweet--Goodson got a first down and knocked at least one dude down on his way. Goodson smash!

3:13 And Jerrod runs in for the touchdown! Whoop.

Extra point no good. That's, well that's inexcusable. It's worse than missing free throws in basketball. It's like if a guy whose only job on the team is to shoot free throws misses free throws. I know I'm being hard on our kickers, but I feel like when your job is so specialized, you ought to be at least dependable and competent. Whatever.

30-16. Still within reach.

3:16 Hey, a penalty on the other team! (Holding.) That's refreshing.

3:17 I still think it's weird that Texas beat Oklahoma. Oklahoma looked crazy good in that first half.

3:18 I know it sounded like I was being snarky about the other team having a penalty for once, but I looked it up: Aggie penalties 5 for 35 yards, K State 1 for 10. That's disparate.

3:19 Dave just said re: Josh Freeman: "That guy is a speciman." I told you. Mancrush.

3:21 K-State is punting . . . for the first time in the whole game. Bright side again: Goodson returned for the first time all season, and did very nicely. The Ags get to start the next drive at their own 37. Goodson smash!

3:22 Two good plays in a row again--one first down and one almost first down. My optimism is coming back. I can't decide whether that's good or not.

3:24 On third and two, we get penalty #6. Fantastic.

But we convert the third anyway. Fantastic, unsarcastically!

3:25 And since it's the end of the third quarter, I get to hear a bit of the War Hymn under the announcers' voices. I hoard crumbs of Aggie game day like this.

3:27 In his stats, Tom Turkeyville lets me know that the Ags have more offensive yards than K-State. That's another baby step.

3:30 Another third down conversion, and Tannehill has almost 100 yards today. Yay.

3:31 First and goal at the 9. That's the kind of thing I like to hear. (When it's my team, obviously.) Also, Jerrod is doing pretty darn well today. I don't think I'll ever make a jersey with his number on it or anything, but there's no doubt in my mind that even if he and McGee are equally healthy, Johnson should start for the rest of the season.

3:32 Two yards from the endzone, and here's the J-Train!

Aw, didn't get in though. But it was still the right call!

3:33 Dangit, J-Train didn't get in again, so we turn it over on downs. That's a downer, but it was still the right call.

3:35 The more I think about it, the sadder and sadder I am that the last drive didn't turn into a touchdown. That really would have made this game winnable.

3:38 Dave just really scared me. He was describing a run by a K-State player: "He's gonna go all the way . . . to midfield."

3:40 Dave quote: "If they're going to keep this interesting, they need to stop this here." He is right, but the Ags do not stop them here; they get yet another first down. Sigh.

3:45 Josh Freeman runs in for another touchdown. Now it's a three score game with four and a half minutes left to go. Previous optimism: good only for additional pain. 37-16.

3:48 Dave mentioned the Texas Tech game again. It gave me the jibblies.

3:51 Another nice catch for Tannehill--he's up to 112 yards now. Come on Ags, let's get some garbage points! (Or, if you prefer, dignity points. Dignity points!)

3:52 And there they are! Touchdown for Goodson! Extra point . . . delayed by illegal formation. Way to go Ags. Again, these are stupidity penalties.

Tannehill set a freshman record for catches with 11. That's pretty cool.

The extra point is good, so 37-23.

3:55 Tom Turkeyville isn't giving up hope, insisting that stranger things have happened. OK, Tom. Name three.

3:56 Onside kick, which Other Dave calls "Unsuccessful, but a good try." Fair enough.

3:57 A facemask penalty brings it up to 8 for 60 yards. That's ugly. That has to stop.

4:01 The Daves just mentioned that this was a pretty close game, statisically (as long as you don't count score as a statistic), which was also true last week. That is improvement from early in the season, and I suppose it's more than I expected in Big XII play. Still, as has often been observed, "Statistics are for losers."

4:03 Crap! Garbage points aren't dignity points if you let the winning team score them too! Freeman scores another touchdown. 44-23.

4:06 About a minute to go, no timeouts, and the Aggies start their final drive.

4:07 Tannehill scores. Other Dave, knowing that this game is on TV precisely nowhere, insists that you'd have to see this catch to believe it. Thanks.

Made the extra point, 44-30.

4:10 K-State runs out the clock, so 44-30 is the final.

So let's summarize this game: it was worse than I expected. I thought K-State would be bad enough that we could beat them, but I was mistaken. I never expected that they would score more than forty points.

There were some bright spots on the offense, mostly Ryan Tannehill. Jerrod didn't make the hideous errors that he did last week. So I think we continued to improve, but the defense is still so bad that we were never really in this game. We were close to being in it, but not really in it.

Texas Tech won't be able to completely shut down our offense--if Jerrod & co really crank it up, we might score thirty or almost thirty again, but I can easily see them hanging 70 or more on us. It's going to be grizzly.