247Sports Lists Texas A&M Football among Programs Most Devastated by Personnel Losses

247Sports Claims Texas A&M Football is Team 4th Most Devastated by Personnel Losses in the Country

CBS's 247Sports recently put out a list of college football programs that have been the most decimated by personnel losses, both to the transfer portal and the NFL Draft. Of the top 9 programs listed, six will be in the SEC next year: Texas (9th), Florida (7th), South Carolina (6th), Georgia (5th), Texas A&M (4th), and Alabama (1st).

Is it fair to list Texas A&M football among those teams? They've certainly lost quite a few contributors. Here's what 247 had to say about the Aggies:

"Texas A&M lost a program-record 26 players to the transfer portal since Jimbo Fisher's firing and unfortunately, many of the departures are former five-star gems from the top-ranked signing class in 2022. Unlike a few other programs in this list, however, Texas A&M has fought fire with fire in terms of signing plug-and-play replacements."

The author goes on to give a very brief overview of the reinforcements coming from the portal for Texas A&M football in the upcoming year. This includes Dezz Ricks, Nic Scourton, and Scooby Williams.

So who are the big players the article says the Aggies are losing? They list seven: Walter Nolen, Evan Stewart, Fadil Diggs, LT Overton, Jake Johnson, Max Johnson, and... Raymond Cottrell? That's three starters (three and a half if you count Jake Johnson, who played a lot, but Max Wright had the starting spot), three backups, and a guy who recorded one catch all year, which came late in a blowout against ULM.

Nolen and Stewart are talented, yes. Both were decently productive. The same could be said of Diggs. Listing Max Johnson's transfer, though, strikes me as strange: he was bound to be a backup to Weigman again this year. Jake Johnson, I understand a little more. Overton was talented but just didn't produce enough while here. Cottrell is exceedingly strange to list here.

The strangest part of this is that the article is meant to address both transfer portal and NFL draft losses. Why not list Ainias Smith? McKinnley Jackson? Edgerrin Cooper? Why list Cottrell instead? I'm just not sure I understand this portion of the article.

Overall, there's no doubt that the Aggies have lost a fair amount of talent. The production loss is a different story, however: Texas A&M football returns almost all of their offensive line, three of their top five pass-catchers, three of their top five tacklers, and bringing in instant-impact players at positions of need. This is all not to mention that Weigman's return will be an immediate upgrade at the signal-caller position, just as a change in OC to Collin Klein will remake the offensive system significantly, doubtless for the better.

The number of players in the portal from Texas A&M football is gaudy on its face. There are some talented guys in there. But too much is being made of their losses when you see the production of the outgoing players, especially compared to who is returning to College Station this fall.