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It was, to put it mildly, disappointing. At times, it was infuriating. And now the Aggies find themselves having to get their act together after what was supposed to be a feel-good game.

Yeah, it was a cupcake. And yeah, they were pretty vanilla. Yeah, they emptied the bench. But the problems that existed before this game didn’t go away and you may have had some new ones pop up.

Offensively, I guess you can’t gripe about 565 yards of total offense, especially when you pull your starters with 25 minutes or so left in the game. That’s the most yardage they’ve had in more than three years. But they also looked like they were just going through the motions for large parts of the game.

Marcel Reed had a pretty solid showing, going completing 20 of 31 passes for 268 yards, 2 TD and an interception. Clearly, he was given orders not to run much, because he only ran four times for 41 yards. He could have gotten a whole lot more. Reed’s development as a passer is still very much in progress, but he definitely made more good throws tonight than he has at any other point this year. But he also missed some potentially big plays and has to learn to put some touch on his passes. He’s kind of got a little touch of Calzada Disease in that every pass is coming out at 100%, whether it’s 5 yards or 50.

There is no longer a quarterback controversy. Conner Weigman was terrible tonight. He was 2-5 for 37 yards and an interception. He’s not seeing the field, he’s feeling ghosts in the pocket and he’s afraid to throw the ball. I’m beginning to think the injury against Auburn did more damage to his psyche than it did to his body, and then getting hurt early against Notre Dame didn’t help matters. He doesn’t even look like the same player.

Miles O’Neill, on the other hand, gave the A&M staff reason for optimism. He completed five of his six passes for 51 yards and a touchdown. He’s still got a long motion, but he showed really good accuracy and the big arm during his work late in the game. We still have to see what he can do against quality competition, but I was impressed by what I saw tonight.

We’ve been waiting for the tight ends to be big factors in the offense all season and tonight it finally happened. Reed said that they were surprised when New Mexico State came out and played a lot of Cover 3, but that left the middle of the field open. Tre Watson had 4 catches for 67 yards and an acrobatic hurdle of an NMSU defender, and Theo Ohrstrom had five catches for 111 yards as he just rumbled through defenders. Now A&M has shown the world what they can do with the tight ends, and that should make life simpler for the receivers.

Those receivers, really, didn’t do much tonight. Jahdae Walker had three catches for 48 yards, Noah Thomas had two catches and an acrobatic touchdown catch to start the scoring and Moose Muhammad caught a touchdown. Ashton Bethel-Roman had his first touchdown late in the game. But, since the tight ends were running free in the NMSU secondary, there wasn’t a need to force the ball to the wideouts.

A&M does, however, now have a problem at receiver. I’m guessing Cyrus Allen’s season is over. He may not have caught a lot of passes, but he picked up a lot of yards when he was targeted. That means Muhammad is likely moving back into the lineup in Allen’s spot. It could be a great story of redemption, but right now it just seems like A&M lost a weapon.

The running game was a mixed bag. Amari Daniels was great in his very brief appearance, picking up 84 yards on five carries and ripping off a 71-yard touchdown run. But EJ Smith just was not good. He couldn’t break a run against one of the nation’s worst rush defenses, one that Daniels lit up immediately. He stumbled over his own feet, tripped on his lineman’s feet, and didn’t take advantage of huge holes. He had 60 yards on 15 carries, with a long of nine. Frankly, I think I’d rather see AJ DiNota, because at least he gets downhill in a hurry and doesn’t dance around. I have to think Terry Bussey is going to get more reps at running back and they were just not going to show that tonight.

A&M averaged 7.3 yards per play and 6.1 yards a carry, so you can’t say the offensive line was bad. But TJ Shanahan had two key penalties, including one that killed a potential scoring drive (a false start on 4th and 2), and that wasn’t positive. Kam Dewberry had a better performance. The tackles were fine. A&M gave up two sacks when Weigman came in, but I think that was more on him than it was on the line.

My biggest complaint would be that Tyler White had to punt three times and two potential scoring drives ended with interceptions at or near the end zone. There should be no punts against an NMSU and you should never lose the turnover battle to them. A&M had the opportunity to blow the doors off of NMSU and lost focus.

NMSU came into this game averaging 304.3 yards per game on offense, which was 129th in the nation. They ended up with 214. They averaged 188 yards a game on the ground and ended up with 122. They had no passing yards in the first quarter and didn’t have 100 for the game.

But this could have been much more painful for them.

I figured that, at this point, A&M would figure there’s enough tape out there and they would just play their regular defense and come after NMSU. They didn’t. There were very few blitzes and they seemed more content to contain than really get after the quarterback.

I wasn’t pleased with the fact that Seth McGowan had a 16-yard run off tackle on the first offensive play for NMSU. I really didn’t like that he had a 25-yard run where A&M missed three tackles. McGowan averaged nearly 8 yards a carry in the first half before A&M corralled him more after halftime, but he still finished with 75 yards at 5.4 yards a carry.

But McGowan was NMSU’s offense. Their passing game absolutely sucks. They completed 7 of 23 passes with a long of 21. A&M broke up seven passes, five of which were at the line of scrimmage. Several passes were a lot closer to A&M defenders than any wideout, and there were a few more where I have no idea where the ball was going.

The big story tonight was Malick Sylla, who came off the bench to rack up 5 tackles, 3 tackles for loss and 2 sacks — the first of his career. A&M could always use another speed rusher, and Sylla may have worked himself into more playing time.

Shemar Stewart left in the second quarter and didn’t return as a precaution after getting banged up; Shemar Turner got hit with yet another personal foul and went to the bench after that second quarter mistake. But DJ Hicks, Rodas Johnson, Albert Regis, Gabe Dindy and Samu Taumanupepe were solid.

Taurean York got nicked up early on, so Solomon DeShields got more playing time than usual and had three tackles. Freshman Tristan Jernigan and Jordan Lockhart played most of the second half and looked really good. The future looks bright at linebacker — at last.

Like with the offense, I have two big gripes. I was disappointed in a couple of long drives that ground a lot of time off the clock, even if they didn’t translate into points. I expected more pressure on the quarterback. And I am absolutely sick and tired of the missed tackles.

Randy Bond made his only field goal attempt. Coverage was good. Tyler White was Tyler White. No complaints here.

I thought Collin Klein called a really good game, maybe his best at A&M. The play designs were good, he set Reed up in good situations and they took advantage as they scored on their first four drives before they slacked off. I would have liked to have seen Reed hit on a couple of the deep shots, but the offense was pretty good considering your top running back left for the night after five carries and you had backups on for the vast majority of the second half.

The defense ended up with 10 tackles for loss and two sacks, so it wasn’t like they were horrible. But I would have liked to have seen them impose their will more and truly dominate. It was a bit disappointing that they weren’t dominant.

I really thought coach Elko was going to be livid about the pretty meh performance after the first 18 minutes, but he was pretty relaxed and pleased with things. He said the idea was to come out, take care of business and move on, so I guess he was ok with things. But from here on out, there can’t be any mental breaks or letdowns. The stakes are too high.