Texas A&M offense ‘eye candy,’ effective execution or both?

When South Carolina’s football team takes the field against Texas A&M on Saturday, it will get more than the basic Air Raid spread offense.

The Aggies’ scheme under Kevin Sumlin comes heavy with quirks. There will be plays where the offensive line splits the middle like the Red Sea. Other times the line will go left as the quarterback and running back sprint right.

These are things the Gamecocks won’t see most other weeks of the year.

“It’s just a lot of eye candy,” Linebacker Bryson Allen-Williams said. “We have a lot of keys that our coaches set for us. They let us know. Our coaches do a good job of evaluating film and picking up on tendencies, relaying it to us.

“If we focus in, and lock in, it’s not going to do that much to us.”

The Aggies are right now averaging 7.1 yards per play with graduate transfer quarterback Trevor Knight at the helm. He’s tended to be up and down, but his receiving group boasts both tall, top-flight athletes and speedy ones.

Allen-Williams and his fellow linebackers will also contend with a running game that’s found a dynamic option in true freshman Trayveon Williams. He’s averaging 9.7 yards per carry.

And that makes it all the harder with tempo and everything extra.

“Keep your eyes on your keys,” Chris Moody said. “Do your job, make sure you follow whatever your techniques is. You’ve got to do it to the best of your abilities because they’re going to come with a lot of stuff and you’ve just got to make sure focus on what you’ve got.”

Gamecocks coach Will Muschamp brushed off the “eye candy” notion, turning his focus on the baseline things the Aggies do well.

Beneath some of the quirks, the formations and the looks, Texas A&M stays true to its fundamental plan.

“The reason why they have a high execution level is they do what they do,” Muschamp said. “They may disguise it by a different motion or shift, but their route concepts are very consistent and their run game is very consistent week-to-week.”

This story was originally published September 28, 2016 at 2:18 PM with the headline "Texas A&M offense ‘eye candy,’ effective execution or both?."