BY RICHARD CROOME
Eagle Columnist

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For a brief moment Saturday, everything was going just as it had been scripted when the season kicked off for the Texas A&M football team.

The defense was bending but not breaking, and the offense was controlling the line of scrimmage, allowing Jorvorskie Lane to pound for yards and Mike Goodson to maneuver his way to the corner. The Aggies ran inside. They ran outside. They used the occasional, well-timed pass play to keep the opposition honest, and they had enough defense to complement all of it.

It was reminiscent of the A&M-Missouri game at Kyle Field last season, when the Aggies wore down the Tigers for a 25-19 victory.

This time around, though, it took three A&M plays inside the Missouri 20 to wipe it all out. An incompletion. A completed pass for minus 7 yards. A kick wide right.

That was it.

Instead of the past, it was back to the present for A&M.

Three plays that got progressively worse in the red zone doomed the Aggies. Rather than taking the lead with a touchdown or closing the gap to two points and putting the Tigers -- at least the Missouri defense -- on their heels, it was over.

The Tigers' multifaceted offense made sure of it.

Missouri turned the tables on the Aggies, looking unstoppable, much as A&M did last year when it finished with 80- and 54-yard drives in the fourth quarter to control the clock. The Tigers did it with the flair they've become known for, driving 80 yards twice in the final period.

A&M's bend in the defense broke, amplified by the unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and ejection of safety Alton Dixon after a typical Martin Rucker catch and run with at least two Aggies on his back.

So in spite of the Aggies' sudden surge of good play, they left Faurot Field empty-handed. No victory. No moral victory. And probably no bowl game, unless the Aggies find a way in the next 13 days to win more than one quarter per game.

"This team needs a victory," Goodson said after the game, refusing to claim a moral victory for the Aggies.

Goodson had 126 total yards of offense, an effort not unlike many last season. Of that, 67 yards came on passes from Stephen McGee, who was as sharp as he's been this year, especially with the Tigers blitzing more often than not.

The way the Aggies performed in the third quarter would have given them the lead if not for another shoddy start against a Top 10 team.

"That's something we're missing, everybody coming out with a [tough] attitude," said Martellus Bennett, who caught a touchdown pass in each half.

In the first 30 minutes, A&M's tackling was nearly nonexistent as Missouri racked up 329 yards offense. And with the defense struggling, the Aggie offense did nothing outside of a 60-yard pass when the Tigers blew a coverage. On A&M's one, real first-half opportunity, the coaching staff pulled back the reins and punted on another fourth-and-1 in their opponent's territory (see Oklahoma game).

The exclamation point of the Aggies' first-half troubles came on Jeremy Maclin's 82-yard catch-and run for Missouri, a play that could have been shortened dramatically by a simple shove from either Jordan Pugh or Marquis Carpenter. Pugh took the wrong angle at the speedy freshman, and Carpenter was unable to get off a down-field block and could only watch as Maclin squeezed between himself and the sideline untouched.

Ten seconds earlier, it appeared as if the Aggies could have escaped the first half trailing only 17-9, an improvement on last week's effort that would have been very manageable, until those decisive three plays.

• Richard Croome's e-mail address is richard.croome@theeagle.com.

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