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The Fix: 5 questions facing Texas A&M in 2014

The Fix is a look at major storylines following this year's top college contenders, and how teams will handle these challenges heading into the season.

The Texas A&M Aggies have made significant strides under head coach Kevin Sumlin, emerging as a contender in the always tough SEC West. The team will face some serious challenges now as they say goodbye to Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Johnny Manziel, and usher in a new era under center.

There will be no room for growing pains as the team works in some new faces. Their schedule starts tough, and stays tough, right through the regular season.

Here are five questions facing Texas A&M entering the 2014 season:

Who's going to throw the ball?

Kevin Sumlin came over to Texas A&M with the reputation as an offensive guru, and through two seasons at the helm in College Station, he's lived up to that billing, helping the Aggies to a 20-6 record, including a pair of wins in bowl games.

Now he faces his biggest test since joining the Aggies: replacing Johnny Manziel.

The top candidates to start the season under center for the Aggies are Kyle Allen, a true freshman and the No. 1 pro-style quarterback in the class of 2014, and Kenny Hill, a dual-threat sophomore who threw for 183 yards and a touchdown in 2013.

Can the team replace its lost first-round talent?

The aforementioned Manziel wasn't the only first-round talent leaving the program. The first team to have two players plucked from its roster during the 2014 NFL Draft was the Aggies, who lost offensive tackle Jake Matthews and wide receiver Mike Evans with the sixth and seventh picks in the draft.

The Aggies scored 44.2 points per game a year ago, the fifth best mark in the nation. Spending somewhere between $50,000 and $60,000 on an insurance policy to keep offensive tackle Cedric Ogbuehi around for another year helps, and the team returns four starters along the offensive line, but that's still a lot of talent to replace in a relatively short time.

How will Kyle Field renovations impact the 12th man?

The Kyle Field faithful have taken pride in their ability to help out their team by making as much noise as possible when the situation calls for it, embracing the moniker "Home of the 12th Man."

Come the fall, Kyle Field will have a new look. Among the changes, there will be a relocation of some of the upper bowls, which will move some fans further from the field in an effort to improve sight lines. Whether that leads to a blow to the 12th man experience is yet to be seen, but moving fans away from the field doesn't sound like the best idea to come out of College Station.

Can they find more magic in Tuscaloosa?

Since the start of the 2008 season, a span of 42 home games, Alabama has just three losses marked off beside their name. One of those losses came in 2012, when Sumlin led the Aggies into Tuscaloosa for the first time in his tenure with the program and helped the team to a surprising 29-24 victory.

The Crimson Tide enter this season on a two-game losing streak, their first losing streak since 2008, and with the Tide bringing in the top recruiting class in the nation for the third year in a row, they'll be out for blood.

How will they handle a difficult schedule?

The month of September shakes down quite favorably for the Aggies, who will host Lamar and Rice, then visit SMU, then take on Arkansas at a neutral location.

The problem for the team is that just about every game they play outside the month of September will not be easy. The team opens its schedule with a bang in South Carolina, and has scheduled dates in Alabama and Auburn. They'll close out the season with consecutive home games, but they certainly won't be looking forward to games against Missouri and LSU - games against Les Miles's Tigers have yielded consecutive losses over the last two seasons.

Previous editions of The Fix:

Alabama | Florida State | Ohio State

Auburn | LSU | Oregon

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