{"id":14892,"date":"2025-10-22T01:12:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T01:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/14892\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T01:12:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T01:12:10","slug":"why-rueben-owens-ii-and-e-j-smith-are-crucial-to-texas-ams-championship-goals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/14892\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Rueben Owens II and E.J. Smith are crucial to Texas A&M\u2019s championship goals"},"content":{"rendered":"

The double-edged sword of upper-crust contention includes a prohibition of regression or setbacks. The best teams \u2014 the ones that hope to play in college football\u2019s most meaningful bowl games in December and January \u2014 must be equipped to quickly and seamlessly fill the holes that open along the path toward it.<\/p>\n

Texas A&M,<\/a> now down a workhorse weapon for the foreseeable future, is now among that group. <\/p>\n

Running back Le\u2019Veon Moss will miss a \u201csignificant amount of time,\u201d<\/a> head coach Mike Elko said after A&M\u2019s win vs. Florida last week, but is expected to return this season. The Aggies \u2014 ranked third in the AP Top 25 poll<\/a> and undefeated at 7-0 for the first time since the 1994 season \u2014 are in an enviable position as it pertains to the College Football Playoff and don\u2019t have time to lag while Moss heals. <\/p>\n

The Aggies\u2019 rushing offense ranks within the middle of the pack nationwide and among the bottom third of all SEC teams, per Pro Football Focus, and sophomore quarterback Marcel Reed runs the ball fewer times per game on average this year compared to last year. The ground game could be an area that the Aggies could exploit this Saturday against LSU\u2019s defense, which allowed 239 rushing yards in its loss to Vanderbilt last weekend. <\/p>\n

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A duo of A&M backs with prodigious backgrounds will now try to recreate Saturday in Baton Rouge, La. \u2014 and potentially for the rest of the season.<\/p>\n

Sophomore Rueben Owens II, a once-prized recruit<\/a>, has rushed for three touchdowns in two starts since Moss was sidelined. Senior E.J. Smith \u2014 the son of Dallas Cowboys legend Emmitt Smith<\/a> \u2014 has been elevated from a depth position to a backup role and carried the ball seven times in Texas A&M\u2019s win vs. Arkansas Saturday night. <\/p>\n

Owens scored two second-half touchdowns vs. the Razorbacks to fortify a wild 45-42 win.<\/a> Smith converted a critical 4th and 1 rush to sustain a fourth-quarter drive that ended in a 12-yard touchdown run from Owens. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe answered the call every time we needed to, \u201cElko said. \u201dI thought it was really great the way we went out in the second half and just continued to make plays to find a way to win the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Owens and Smith were among those to thank. Owens, a five-star recruit from El Campo, was the second-ranked running back nationally and the second-best signee in former head coach Jimbo Fisher\u2019s last full recruiting class. He earned All-SEC honors as a freshman when he split time as a back and returner, but missed the entirety of last season with a lower-body injury. <\/p>\n

The 5-11 back now leads the Aggies in yardage after just one-and-a-half games as the team\u2019s de facto starter. He rushed for a career-high 142 yards vs. Mississippi State earlier this month, when Moss was still healthy, and totaled 120 yards and three scores against Florida and Arkansas in two games after that. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think he\u2019s one of the kids who gets a lot better every week that he goes out there because those reps are so valuable for him,\u201d Elko said. \u201cHe\u2019s getting more and more comfortable with what we\u2019re asking him to do in the run game with the run lines and the run angles … I just think he continues to develop every week and to be more of a complete back. Obviously we need him to continue to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith, a four-star recruit at Jesuit, chose Stanford over offers from A&M, Florida, Georgia, Ohio State and others nearly six years ago. He, like Owens, saw what could\u2019ve been a breakout campaign end prematurely. Smith rushed for 206 yards and three touchdowns in the first two games of the 2022 season but missed the remainder of it with a knee injury. <\/p>\n

He was a third-stringer one year later and transferred to A&M prior to the 2024 season.<\/a> The first-year result mirrored his final season at Stanford when he was no higher than third on the running back depth chart. His sixth and final season of collegiate eligibility began the same this year, too, with both Moss and Owens ahead of him. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you think about it, E.J. Smith\u2019s not having all of the limelight he dreamed of having going into his senior year, I\u2019m sure,\u201d Elko said. \u201cI\u2019m sure he wishes he was the feature back carrying the ball 20 times a game.\u201d<\/p>\n

But. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut,\u201d Elko continued, \u201chere it is, fourth and one at Arkansas, in our own territory, and he\u2019s got to convert, and that\u2019s a championship play. That play and that player will have as much to do with our success as anyone, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Aggies will hope so. <\/p>\n

Find more Texas A&M coverage from The Dallas Morning News here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The double-edged sword of upper-crust contention includes a prohibition of regression or setbacks. The best teams \u2014 the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[732,3688,12078,154,27,260,29,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-14892","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-article","9":"tag-colleges","10":"tag-emmitt-smith","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-texas-am-aggies","14":"tag-texas-headlines","15":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}