Texas A&M sits at 3-3 at the halfway point of the season, a record that seemed pretty unthinkable to Aggie fans before the season began. Most had A&M hovering around 5-1 at this point— 4-2 if you were bearish on the Aggies' chances— but at .500 with half of the season's games gone means some pretty stark things for this year in Aggieland.
The main thing is that the Aggies will have to find three more wins somewhere on this schedule in order to get bowl-eligible. With the way this team is playing right now, without some major shakeup, they are going to have to pull off some upsets to get there.
The Citadel is the obvious first step. Next week, you get a layup for the team over an FCS squad where you should have your starters out by the middle of the third quarter. Heck, it could even be a moment where we see Brady Hart and Helaman Casuga get some significant snaps to see how they look in this offense.
Texas A&M's bowl game chances are suddenly looking extremely dim
Then, though, things actually become much more fraught. You have to get two wins from this group of games: at Alabama, at South Carolina, home against Tennessee, at Oklahoma, home against Texas.
Of those five, Carolina and Tennessee seem like the easiest bets; however, the Aggies have been patently unable to muster even the slightest bit of offense against good defenses so far this year. Tennessee looks to be an excellent defense, despite their relatively lackluster production on the other side of the ball up until this point.
Carolina is less so, but they just gave Florida the belt down in Gainesville and held them to 19 points. Shane Beamer's teams have tended to get better as the season goes on, as the Aggies unfortunately found out in 2024, and they are looking for major revenge after A&M's comeback in 2025.
At Oklahoma is an interesting one. These are two teams with good defense that have borderline nonfunctional offensive play for long stretches; when you have a low-scoring game, just one or two plays could decide things. There's potential there, but you can't say that it feels like it's super likely.
Home against Texas is going to be one of the most pressure-packed games for the Aggies in recent memory. With everything else going on for Elko, if he falls to 0-3 against Texas in his career, it will be a huge black mark. Being in Kyle Field will be helpful, without a doubt, but again, they'll have to figure something out with this offense if they hope to be competitive.
The non-starter looks to be Alabama. Although the Aggies will be getting the Tide after games against Georgia and Tennessee, two of their big rivals, it's hard to foresee A&M pulling out a win in Tuscaloosa with how good the Tide have looked so far this year. Keelon Russell, despite his performance against Georgia, looks like he's putting things together right now, and A&M won't be able to do much against that Tide defense.
That said, though, we've seen the Aggies go on the road after reaching a historic low and defeat a highly-ranked team from the Magnolia State before— when Kyle Allen took over for the struggling Kenny Hill in 2014, he led the Ags to a win over no. 3 Auburn in Jordan-Hare. Maybe a quarterback change could do the same thing for the Aggies twelve years later.
In all, though, it's tough to find the wins that you'd need to get to a bowl. In all likelihood, unless something changes, the Aggies will be playing for bowl eligibility in the Lone Star Showdown.
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