The Texas A&M Aggies have high hopes for the 2025 season, and they have several great reasons why. The amount of returning talent they have coming back is one heck of an encouragement, not to mention the job that Mike Elko and his staff were able to do to squeeze 8 wins out of a banged-up and bruised team that lost its top three running backs, played a QB carousel for the better part of the season, and apparently couldn't run complex coverages in the secondary.
With most of those problems hopefully not figuring in during the upcoming year, as well as some major improvements made— not the least of which is in the wide receiver room— this could be a special year for the Aggies. A&M has several breakout candidates on their roster for individual talent, but the team as a whole is extremely solid.
Of course, the Aggies have sort of earned a wait-and-see approach from the national media. 2022 was especially harmful in this regard, as the Aggies were extended a ton of goodwill and squandered it all— again, largely because of injury, but not totally. I expect the preseason polls, in that vein, to appear to have some tempered expectations for the Ags.
Predicting A&M's preseason AP Poll standing ahead of 2025 season
The Aggies ended last year outside of the poll, but in Mark Schlabach's way-too-early top 25 for this season, he had the Aggies at 22. Their national profile has raised a bit since then, with a lot of talk about the offensive line experience that the Ags are bringing back, as well as their excellent job in the portal.
Because of that, I think the Aggies slide up slightly— just inside the top 20, in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Ags at 18 in week one when they face off against UTSA. This splits the difference between the perception they had at the end of the last season and the spot where they are being placed by different statistical models in the preseason.
It always feels perilous to bet against further catastrophic injury, but at some point, the Aggies' luck has to turn around on that front. If it does, this will be quite the year. Imagine a fully-healthy Aggie squad taking home a win from South Bend in week 3— that's a recipe to jump into the top 10 early in the season no matter what happens.
That's down the road, though. For now, my prediction is that the Aggies land as the 18th team in the preseason AP Poll— something that's a while off by this point, but will be upon us before you know it.