The doubt for the maroon and white is already starting to roll in. Texas A&M is coming off one of its best seasons in recent history, making its first-ever College Football Playoff. Many believed this was an amazing step in the right direction, but others have already started to doubt the Aggies' ability to do it all over again.
On a recent episode of That SEC Podcast, Pat Smith of Three Man Front and Finebaum predicted that Texas A&M is one of the most likely teams to “crash and burn” this coming season. It would be one thing if he had stats backing this up, or a long laundry list of reasons, but he only pointed to one game.
Which SEC teams are most likely to crash & burn this season?@patsmithradio believes Texas A&M & Oklahoma both could:
— SEC Mike (@MichaelWBratton) May 25, 2026
"I (Mateer) was injured, but was that the reason he made tremendously bad decisions? The Pick Six in the Alabama game?"
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Mystifyingly small sample size causes SEC expert to predict Texas A&M's downfall
Smith only talked about the Aggies’ playoff game against Miami. His reasoning was that they got all the way to the end of the season and were dominating, but when it mattered most, they couldn’t score any points. While this is true, it is an unfair assessment of what is to come.
The Aggies were only able to score on a field goal attempt in their last bout of the season, losing 10-3, but only focusing on the three points takes away from a lot of positives. Miami, the team that competed for a national championship against Indiana, only scored 10 points against the Texas A&M defense. This was not only the least amount of points the Hurricanes scored in the playoffs, but it was the least amount of points they scored all year.
There is no doubt that it was a rough offensive showing for the Aggies, but even so, they competed the whole game with the best of the best. Two interceptions and a fumble by Marcel Reed derailed most of the team’s offense, but I wouldn’t bet on the Aggies quarterback having the same performance again.
Even with all of the struggles we did see out of the Aggies in their game against the Hurricanes, the only thing that saved Miami was the last-second interception. The Aggies were knocking on the door of the end zone in the waning seconds of the game, and nearly made it in several times— if not for a crushing hit on Reuben Owens, they would have been in for six, going for one to tie or two to win.
That alone shows that Smith's analysis of this game is a little bit skewed. The Aggies had everything they needed to win that home contest, it just came down to a bad bounce of the ball.
Texas A&M enters this coming season once again ready to make a push for the College Football Playoff and has the talent to go further than the first round this go-around. Smith is categorizing the Aggies upcoming season by a performance that wasn’t their best, yet still was competitive. Coach Mike Elko and his team are looking to prove a lot of people wrong, and Smith has now been added to that list.
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