COLLEGE STATION, Texas — And you thought you couldn’t make a difference.

You begged, you pleaded. You emailed, tweeted and probably Instagrammed.

You got down on your hands and knees, shrieked to the heavens, cried real tears and finally posted day and night on Facebook.

And, although it may have taken the entire football season, your voice has been heard.

Finally.

LSU’s Les Miles heard you. Perhaps more importantly, Cam Cameron, the Tigers’ reigning Secretary of Offense, heard your message and, wonder of wonders, heeded the dire warnings.

Texas A&M took the brunt of it, although the Tigers’ “dominating” 23-17 Thanksgiving victory seemed designed more to tease the Aggies than embarrass them.

But it worked.

You wanted to get the quarterback — any quarterback — involved in the Tigers’ offense, anything to give those potentially talented wide receivers something to do besides pat Leonard Fournette on the head.

And, on Thanksgiving night, in a chilly hamlet in the Texas hill country, good gosh, LSU quarterbacks and wide receivers were suddenly busy as bees.

They were no longer innocent bystanders.

It’s still a ground-oriented offensive attack and was never meant to be anything else.

But quarterback Anthony Jennings and speedy Travin Dural were all over the place, all in the Aggies’ hair and, equally important, in their heads from start to finish.

Opponents will now have to respect Jennings and Dural. Now that the Tigers’ offense has finally diversified, the message was loud and clear.

Step away from crowding that box at the line of scrimmage and nobody gets hurt.

Understand, the Tigers still can’t throw the ball a lick.

What, you were expecting overnight miracles?

True, their passing total on Thanksgiving was the best of the month, but 107 yards, though encouraging, doesn’t quite qualify as an aerial circus.

But at least the quarterback had something useful to do — and so did Dural.

LSU seemingly quit beating its head against the wall.

The Tigers freely admitted — which, as you know, is an important first step to recovery — that they just can’t make the legal forward pass work in their offense.

You look around the country, you hear tall tales of other teams flinging it all over the lot, and it really just doesn’t look that difficult.

But for whatever reason, the Tigers just don’t seem to have a knack for it, can’t quite get the hang of it. It’s a code they haven’t cracked.

So, in the final game of the regular season, LSU made do.

If Jennings can’t throw it where Dural can catch it, then by golly make Jennings run it too. And it’s a shame wasting Dural, so give him some land work as well. It’s not like they were scaring a bunch of secondaries in their former roles.

Without the burden of dropping back and watching his secondary reads blur up, Jennings ran 14 times for 119 yards and it would have been 127 but for a foolhardy attempt to throw a late pass (he got sacked, of course).

He looked pretty natural running the read-option, good enough to once again keep Brandon Harris in the bullpen and lure out the obligatory “dang it” from Miles.

“That was a personal piece for me,” Miles said of his every intention to give Harris real playing time. “I didn’t get it done and that was a mistake. But Anthony Jennings could make those (running) plays.”

Who knew?

Of course, before Thursday, Dural had exactly 1 yard rushing in 11 games and, frankly, I must have missed them, Or it, as it were.

Against the Aggies he ran it four times for 49 yards. It seemed like more and it would have been more if not for LSU’s sudden rash of holding calls (it’s always something).

That “jet sweep” thingie he kept burning A&M with wasn’t exactly a revolutionary breakthrough. It was a staple of Steve Spurrier’s Fun n’ Gun offense that revolutionized the SEC in the 1990s, something he used to dial up when he got bored with Danny Wuerffel idly completing fade routes.

But maybe that’s the solution for LSU, too.

Shoot, all of sudden the Tigers’ kickers can’t kick either.

No problem.

Maybe get them some carries in the running game, too.

One size fits all. Got a problem? Hand him the ball. Run, Forrest, run.

There is one tiny flaw to this, but isn’t there always?

As dominating as LSU was to the naked eye at A&M, it wasn’t terribly efficient for the scoreboard.

The last time the Tigers rushed for as many as the 384 yards they ground out on the Aggies (1997), LSU scored 63 points against Kentucky.

Thursday a lot of the production got lost en route and there was a lot more suspense at the end than should have been warranted.

But at least it was different.

Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at shobbs@americanpress.comLSU coach Ed Orgeron celebrates with players after an NCAA college football game against Texas A&M

David J. Phillip