When asked about Texas A&M football's strengths heading forward into next season, there are not a lot of Aggies who will mention Marcel Reed as a passer— a sad fact that mostly has to do with the final two games of the 2025 season. Against Miami and Texas, it seemed like the bottom fell out for the Aggies' passing game in a way, which led to a lot of criticism for Texas A&M's QB1.
Is this a justified judgment of Reed's ability, then? The prevailing notion, among both Aggie fans and haters, is that the Reed of those final two games was his real form (or at least closer to it than the highs had been) and that against previous defenses, A&M had been able to mask those deficiencies.
Some have even begun to question whether Reed took a step forward at all over the course of last season compared to 2024. The consensus was that Marcel needed to improve from what we saw in his first season starting, and it seemed like he had— but even that has had some doubt cast on it recently. Is that fair to do?
Marcel Reed slander is unfounded despite attempts of Texas A&M haters
If there is a culprit here, it has more to do with the game planning of the Aggies than it does the actual ability of Marcel. There are things he can improve on in his game, of course— he's not yet at the place where he's got all the answers to the test— but to say he didn't take a step forward from year to year is pretty ignorant.
Here is a comparison of some key factors for Marcel from 2024 to 2025:
Statistic | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
Yards/Attempt | 7.8 | 8.4 |
TDs/game | 2 | 2.38 |
Yards/Rush | 4.68 | 4.74 |
Comp % | 61.3 | 62.1 |
Every single category sees improvement, even if only marginally. The play-level data sees the Aggie signal caller becoming a lot better from last season to this season, even with those poor later games factored in.
The big issue was that the Texas A&M strategy never adjusted to what defenses were throwing at them. Both Texas and Miami played the same kind of defense that MIssouri did, and the Aggies never made the change to their modified veer attack against either of those teams in the way they did against the Tigers— to very poor results.
Marcel does need to take another step this year, but it's just false to say he didn't take one last season. Hopefully, he can do just that under the tutelage of Holmon Wiggins.