Clemson vs Texas A&M 2018
By: Darby Childress
September 8, 2018, week two of the college football season, the second-ranked, Clemson Tigers faced, twelfth ranked, Texas A&M for their first away game of the season. The Aggies kicked the game off with a field goal to start the game, the Tigers soon answered that play when Sophomore Kelly Bryant scored with a rushing touchdown bringing the score to 7-3 with the tigers in the lead. Freshman quarterback Trevor Lawerence took the field at the start of the second quarter, soon after, and stunned the crowd with a sixty-four-yard touchdown pass to Tee Higgins to in the second quarter taking the Tigers into halftime with a lead of 14-3. After halftime was when things started to take a turn for the Tigers. The Aggies started the second half with a forty-yard field goal, kicked by Daniel LaCamera. Kelly Bryant responded to that with an eight-yard pass to Diondre Overton to finish off a seventy-yard drive that took just four plays. Just thirty-seven seconds later the Aggies got their first touchdown of the game from a seventy-eight-yard drive in two plays.
Both teams continued to go back and forth through the end of the third quarter. The fourth-quarter began with a score of 28-13, and the Tigers seemed to be sitting with a comfortable lead, but the Aggies did not back down, and the Tigers did not score again following Travis Etienne’s one-yard touchdown run to close out the third quarter. The Aggies, on the other hand, made three trips to the end zone in the fourth quarter. Early in the fourth quarter, the Aggies scored a fourteen-yard touchdown pass bringing the score to 28-20, Clemson still in the lead. This is where the “drama” began. The Aggies fumbled the ball out of bounds in the end- zone causing much commotion on the Texas A&M sideline, while also giving Clemson the ball back. Though this did not lead to a touchdown for the Tigers, it did prevent Texas A&M from getting more points on the board. With just fifty-two seconds left on the clock, the Aggies scored a touchdown bringing the score up to 28-26, and the only chance for Texas A&M to win the
game rode on a two-point conversion, but the game came to an exciting end when K’Von Wallace intercepted Kellen Mond in the end-zone to seal the win for the Clemson Tigers. The game ended with the final score being 28-26. The Tigers escaped the Aggies after an impressive, heart-pounding game with Kelly Bryant finishing with 205 yards, and one touchdown while Texas A&M’s starting quarterback Kellen Mond finished with 430 yards and three touchdowns. Clemson was given many chances to close out the Aggies, with a few mistakes hindering that opportunity, but coming out on the other side with a win made Clemson fans everywhere simultaneously release the breath they were holding when the final seconds ticked off the clock.
