COLLEGE STATION — With the season on the line, Texas A&M football lined up for a fourth-down attempt that would keep their College Football Playoff hopes alive.

Down two possessions in the fourth quarter, the Aggies came out of a timeout at the 1-yard line with multiple tight ends, hoping to generate some push and get into the end zone. But that run ended just as the other fourth-down run did: With Texas defenders in the backfield and A&M losing possession.

“We tried a lot of different things, none of it worked,” head coach Mike Elko told reporters following the 17-7 loss. “When you can’t win the line of scrimmage, and your running back is averaging 1.6 yards a carry, it’s going to make it really hard.”

A&M (8-4, 5-3) ran for just 98 yards on the night, averaging 2.9 yards a carry, in what was a dominant effort by the Longhorns’ defense. Remove quarterback Marcel Reed’s 24-yard rush and the numbers for the other 30-plus carriers become even uglier.

It was the worst rushing performance for the Aggies all year, 30 yards worse than any other output in Elko’s first season. Reed led the team with 60 rush yards, nearly doubling the output of running backs Amari Daniels (13 carries for 21 yards) and Rueben Owens (three carries for 10 yards) and EJ Smith (one carry for 4 yards).

The longest rush for a running back was 5 yards.

“We lost the line of scrimmage all night. We weren’t able to get anything going,” Elko said. “Really disappointing. We just didn’t play well enough on offense at all to have any chance at having success.”

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The Aggies opened the game with two straight offensive drives that moved well into the Longhorns’ territory but ended with zero points. Daniels was stuffed for no gain on fourth-and-1 on the first drive, giving the Longhorns the ball back on its own 10-yard line.

On the ensuing A&M drive, Reed rolled to his right, forced an errant pass that was intercepted, and gave Texas the ball back once again. Ten plays later, Texas scored the game’s first points.

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A&M finished the game with just 244 yards of total offense, its worst statistical output since Week 1 against Notre Dame when they finished with 246 against the Fighting Irish.

The Aggies finished 4-for-14 on third and fourth downs while going 0-for-2 in the red zone and having two turnovers on the night.

They lost the time of possession battle 25:16 to 34:44 and trailed by two scores for most of the game.

“It’s pretty difficult to get the pass game going when a team knows that they can stop your run and that you can’t get going on the run game,” Reed said following the loss. “I feel like a lot of the defense we’ve played, we’ve been able to make adjustments. I don’t think we were able to make any adjustments tonight, and it showed.”

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