Texas A&M football sets conference standard, far outpacing rivals in important stat

Despite a late-season slide, Texas A&M football enjoyed quite the step forward last year compared to where they had been. The program was in contention for a playoff spot right up until the final game of the regular season, they were ranked as a top-10 team for quite some time, and they were overall much more of a factor in national discussions than they had been in recent years.

That this team was able to accomplish so much with what was essentially a roster quickly cobbled together out of the transfer portal— not to mention one that saw a huge amount of injury and instability rock key players and positions— is nothing short of remarkable. There were some obvious holes when all was said and done, but it looks like head coach Mike Elko is addressing those.

More exciting than anything else, though, is the amount of contributors from last year's team that is set to return for 2025. We've known the names for a while— Marcel Reed, Le'Veon Moss, Will Lee, Scooby Williams, Ar'maj Reed-Adams, and others— but now, we can put numbers to it. And those numbers paint a pretty rosy picture for the Aggies' upcoming season.

Texas A&M football leads SEC in returning production percentage, laps other conference contenders and rivals

Bill Connelly of ESPN, architect of the advanced statistical profile known as SP+, has released his returning production numbers for next year, and the Aggies are in an enviable spot.

Texas A&M football leads the entire SEC and sits at 6th in the nation in these rankings. That's a pretty notable spot to be in, if you ask me.

While this isn't a slam dunk for the Aggies to now be the best team in the SEC— just like it doesn't mean Vandy will be the second-best team— it does mean that the Aggies are likely to improve by a larger margin than any other team over what they were last year. Given what A&M was able to accomplish, that should be a pretty exciting prospect for A&M fans.

Other notable numbers here are Texas at 13th (103rd in the nation) with 45% of production returning, Georgia right there with them at 14th (105th in the nation) and 45% of production returning as well, and Ole Miss bringing back only 42% of production: good for 113th in the nation.

These are three teams that finished ahead of the Aggies in last year's standings, but all seem set to take a step back. That in mind, it's eminently possible that we see this A&M team take a leap past each of these three squads by the time 2025 has come to a close.