AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Texas beat Texas A&M again in a bitter rivalry. And while any loss to the Longhorns stings, this one is likely to stick with the Aggies for a long time.<\/p>\n
Texas’ 27-17 victory<\/a> Friday night doomed Texas A&M’s Southeastern Conference title hopes, spoiled the Aggies’ undefeated season, upended their potential seeding in the College Football Playoff<\/a> and dinged quarterback Marcel Reed’s late-season surge as a Heisman Trophy contender<\/a>.<\/p>\n But the playoffs and a chance to play for a national title still await.<\/p>\n “There’s (still) a lot right now to be proud of,” Reed said, noting the Aggies won 11 games in the regular season for the first time since 1992. “There’s still a lot to work for … I think we believe that we can make it to the national championship. And so we’re just going to put our heads down and grind.”<\/p>\n The Aggies (11-1, 7-1 SEC, No. 3 CFP) are a solid bet to make the playoff for the first time. But a special season has definitely been saddled with a sour note after a second straight loss to the Longhorns after the rivalry resumed following a decade-long break.<\/p>\n “We’re just thinking about not getting the job done tonight,” Texas A&M coach Mike Elko said. “Maybe coming out of this weekend, maybe we’ll regroup and figure out moving forward what the positives are of 11-1. Right now it just hurts that we lost to our rival.”<\/p>\n The Aggies had never been to the SEC title game since joining the league in 2012. Texas made it last season in its first year in the conference.<\/p>\n Texas started this season No. 1 and the Aggies had a chance to bury the Longhorns’ playoff hopes once and for all. By winning, the Longhorns can start lobbying to be let in.<\/p>\n “We want to go to the SEC championship. We’re tired of losing to the same team back to back years, tired of not winning that trophy,” Texas A&M linebacker Taurean York said. ” But, you know, (the playoffs), that’s the bright side, so we’ll look at it that way.”<\/p>\n Reed had a chance to solidify his Heisman resume, and looked like he might do it when he shook off an early ankle injury scare and led the Aggies to a 10-3 halftime lead.<\/p>\n But he was ultimately outplayed by his Texas counterpart Arch Manning. It was Manning who started the season as the Heisman favorite only to go through a stretch of poor games at the beginning of the season.<\/p>\n Reed’s star rose when he led the Aggies to a shock comeback against South Carolina two weeks ago. There was no rally in A&M this time.<\/p>\n The Aggies cut the Texas lead to 20-17 before Manning scored his clinching touchdown. Reed then threw two late interceptions that sealed it. He finished with 180 yards passing.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here<\/a> and here<\/a> (AP News mobile app). AP college football: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-football-poll<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-football<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Texas beat Texas A&M again in a bitter rivalry. And while any loss to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,2183,2182,163,2185,2184,66,223,2187,349,154,2186,272,2188,172],"class_list":{"0":"post-69813","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-headlines","10":"tag-austin-news","11":"tag-cars","12":"tag-classifieds","13":"tag-education","14":"tag-homes","15":"tag-jobs","16":"tag-local","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-radio","19":"tag-salt-lake","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-television","22":"tag-traffic","23":"tag-utah","24":"tag-weather"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69813","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=69813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}