Mike Elko is looking to take the Aggies to new heights in the upcoming year after making the playoff in only his second season. Texas A&M fans have an immense amount of faith in him to do that, but it won't be easy.
There's been a lot of turnover at some key positions, but the Aggies did a great job to address that in the transfer portal. The jury is out on how effective that will end up being, but there's a lot of optimism, to be sure.
All that said, there are three areas where Texas A&M needs to take a leap from last season's campaign. Here are the big questions Elko must address in this upcoming fall camp.
Mike Elko must address these three areas for Texas A&M in fall camp
Can the Aggies get more interceptions?
Texas A&M had an excellent pass defense last year— at least in one sense of that term. The Aggies prevented opponents from being able to reach their normal levels of efficiency through the air, which is mainly what you're looking to do as a pass defense, but there was one notable issue.
That was the fact that the Aggies simply didn't pull down very many interceptions last year. Despite having guys like Will Lee and Dezz Ricks as their cover men, they were unable to create the takeaways that they needed to; the Aggies had only three interceptions last year, two of which came from linebackers on deflected passes.
Mike Elko talked about that issue in particular during his media availability down in Tampa last week. That's a big area where Texas A&M needs to improve in the upcoming year— as he mentioned, part of it is from the fact that the Ags played a lot of straight-up zone coverage last year, which didn't lend itself to a lot of interceptions.
Can the defense prevent explosive runs?
The one biggest thing that the Aggies struggled with on defense last year was letting opponents get loose on the ground for huge gains. It was a particular quirk of that unit for A&M that, though they were excellent at stopping other teams down-to-down, they would give up massive plays regularly.
Again, this could well be for schematic reasons. The Aggies did not have great depth at defensive tackle last year (as opposed to this season), and so they were not well-equipped to play a certain style of football.
Tyler Onyedim and Albert Regis were both great players for the Aggies, but neither is an absolutely massive space eater in the middle of the line that can wreck run designs. As a result, Onyedim in particular had to play with more quickness, looking to shoot gaps. The Aggies threw numbers at the run in general, and so when a play would break past their first line of defense, it would break for a big run.
That needs to change for 2026. CJ Mims and other players can help the Aggies with that, but if we see the same problem again, more drastic steps might need to be taken.
Has Marcel taken the mental leap?
Last year, Reed demonstrated to everyone watching Aggie games that he was, indeed, an extremely capable passer. Some of the highlight throws he made to KC Concepcion and Mario Craver will live on for years in Aggie lore— but he ended the season with some pretty bad publicity.
Reed, down the stretch of last year, was looking to make the big play far too often. He needed to play the short game and pick up yardage in smaller chunks if that was what the defense was giving him— something he himself acknowledged in Tampa last week.
Working with Holmon Wiggins and Joey Lynch rather than Collin Klein could help Reed break some of those bad habits— those new voices may help him on that front. That's another huge area where the Aggies need to grow in the coming year.
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