After taking down the Citadel today by a 41-0 score, Texas A&M now has to turn their attention ahead to the Alabama Crimson Tide, who fell on the road to the Tennessee Volunteers earlier this afternoon. The Aggies have not played the Tide since 2023, and have not won in Tuscaloosa since 2012, so they have quite the task ahead of them against Kalen DeBoer's squad.
However, after today's game, there's a little bit more hope than there was previously. The Aggies still have a mountainous task in front of them to get to five wins before the bye, but there's one simple thing they can add to their offensive gameplan to give them a much better chance.
It's maybe too simple, frankly: the Aggies need to do more in the designed run game with Marcel Reed. No. 10 looked as comfortable today as he has the entire season, and it's frankly no coincidence that there was also a much larger diet of designed runs for him in this game compared to what we've seen previously.
Texas A&M has to run more with Marcel Reed if they want to beat Alabama
The Aggies have clearly been more careful with Reed so far this season— likely because of the lack of quarterback depth that we've seen in the room for this team— than they were previously, but the time for that caution is long gone. Not only are we in the second half of the season now, we are at a ppoint where A&M needs to do any and everything they can to get things going offensively.
Reed's biggest weapon has been his legs the entire time he's been in college, and the Aggies need to take advantage of that. We didn't see nearly enough of it against LSU or Missouri in the Aggies' last two road games, and there were some predictably awful offensive performances.
Running Marcel allows the Aggies to keep opponents off-balance when they have to defend this A&M rushing attack. Missouri always attacked Marcel when there was any kind of read aspect to the play, forcing him to hand off (and he did end up handing off even when he shouldn't have a couple of times, too), so designing some runs for him will help him remain a part of this aspect of the offense.
Though the Aggie defense has had to work out their own set of issues, we've seen over the last couple of games that this Alabama offense can indeed be stopped by a skilled defense. A&M will have a chance in this game thanks to that side of the ball, but if we see another game like we did in Missouri, where the Aggies simply cannot string anything together offensively, then they'll have no chance for the upset.
This is a swarming, attacking defense that the Aggies are about to face, and so they need to do whatever they can to make them react just a step slowly. Running Marcel with intention is the key to doing that— so Mike Elko and Holmon Wiggins had better incorporate it.
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