31.3% pass success rate, according to Pro Football Focus<\/a>.<\/p>\nTexas A&M head coach Mike Elko named Tawfiq Byard the defensive player of the game after leading the team with six tackles.<\/p>\n
Byard spoke on where his hard-hitting safety mentality came from.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy freshman year of college, we had an inside run period. And I was going against Naquan Wright, a running back at USF back then,\u201d Byard said. \u201cAnd I know all y\u2019all seen a hit of him running, a player that played for Alabama over and stuff like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I always had that in the back of my hand, like, oh, I don\u2019t want to be that guy,\u201d Byard said. \u201cBut one day we had an inside run and I was the safety going in.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I remember I went in and I closed my eyes and my defensive coordinator came behind me and said, you soft, soft,\u201d Byard said. \u201cAnd ever since then it was a… I didn\u2019t like that. You know, coming from the defensive coordinator calling me soft as a safety, that didn\u2019t sit well with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo ever since then I\u2019ve been putting my helmet on stuff, putting my chest on stuff,\u201d Byard said.<\/p>\n
The secondary will go against a Missouri passing offense and quarterback Austin Simmons that ranks second in SEC games this year with 317 yards per game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got to put pressure on this guy. You know, he\u2019s real comfortable back there,\u201d Byard said. \u201cAustin Simmons, you know, he does a great job of looking and scanning the whole field.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, we have to get pressure on him. Make him uncomfortable. Get him off his spot. Move him around,\u201d Byard said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s something that I\u2019ve done in my background was put pressure on the quarterback coming off the blitz. You know, blitzing and stuff like that,\u201d Byard said. \u201cSo we just got to put pressure on this kid.\u201d<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 KBTX. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) – Texas A&M snapped a two-game losing streak Saturday with a 34-7 win over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[254,2055,2060,2058,2057,2059,2061,27,29,28,2056],"class_list":["post-458547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-live-speeches","tag-live-updates","tag-live-video","tag-press-conference","tag-real-time-coverage","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-video-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458547","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=458547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}