Another sign just dropped that Marcel Reed will be one of nation’s best QBs in 2026

Texas A&M quarterback Marcel Reed is possibly the most divisive quarterback in major college football for this upcoming season (at least now that Brendan Sorsby is out of the picture, though that’s a whole different situation). His numbers and achievements last year put him on track to get to New York for the Heisman ceremony, but the late-season stumble against Texas had him fall out of the voting altogether.

The game he put together against Miami didn’t really do him any favors either, as his numbers in that contest were similarly unimpressive. Of course, the blame for that loss goes far beyond just his performance, but it is unavoidably true that a better game from him would do a lot to quiet all of the noise that has been going on about his quality as a passer.

This is largely the same kind of noise that we’ve heard about Marcel over the whole past year, and until the final two games of 2025, that noise had been quieted by how well he was playing up until that point in the season. This offseason, he’s been putting in even more work to improve himself for 2026, and another signal just dropped that he will be among the nation’s best passers in the upcoming year.

Marcel Reed named as Manning Passing Academy standout as signals continue building for third-year leap

Reed was named as one of the standouts in the Manning Passing Academy per On3, showing that his progress that we saw last season has continued apace.

Reed was particularly praised after last night’s session for his aplomb with the deep ball, which he put on display in a big way in the “Air It Out” competition. Adding that dimension to his game was a big emphasis going into last season, and it paid off with a huge increase in his explosive pass rate.

The thing that Reed needs to work on at this point is taking what the defense gives him. There’s been a definite progression to his game up until this point that close observers will recognize, and if he adds this final piece, he’ll be extremely well-rounded as a passer.

The first stage we saw when he was initially thrust into action during the 2024 season. When Conner Weigman went down, Reed took the reins, and in those first few games, he relied a lot on his legs to help him out. When he dropped back to pass, he was very hesitant to throw the ball unless his receiver was wide open, wishing to avoid making any mistakes.

This cost him majorly against Arkansas, who routinely dropped back and rushed only three, putting eight in coverage to make it hard for Marcel to find any open man. If you go back and watch that game from the 2024 season, you’ll see his hesitancy on display over and over again.

Of course, Weigman came back, but Reed eventually wrested control of the starting job back from him. This marked the second stage of his development, when he was far more consistently on time and on target with the short to medium routes, though with a limited number of concepts he seemed to be comfortable with. His passing success rate took a huge jump from his first stint in 2024 to his second, despite playing far more difficult defenses in that latter period.

The third stage was the entirety of last season. Reed, now armed with far better receivers, was clearly intent upon airing the ball out and making some explosive plays happen in the vertical passing game— and that he definitely did.

However, the converse of that was that he was very boom-or-bust. Gone was the passer who was too timid to try for anything big— Marcel had now moved in the opposite direction, taking risk after risk. This is when we saw his yards per attempt skyrocket, but with it, the interceptions.

When teams decided to take that away as best as they could and dropped coverage against him again, simply living with whatever he could pick up on the ground with his legs, he once more struggled. If he can work on finding that open receiver and making things happen against these shell coverages, then Texas A&M’s offense might just be unstoppable. 

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