Why Texas A&M football's already-impressive returning production is deceptively low

Texas A&M football set to return high proportion of production for 2025— but numbers even underrate what A&M has

Texas A&M football fans are excited to see what this team will look like in the upcoming year. The Aggies are set to bring back a large number of key contributors for next season, and given what we saw out of this squad last year, that's plenty of reason for optimism.

One of the most predictive factors for a team's improvement or decline from year to year is that of returning production. Over the years, it has been shown to be effective in predicting how a year will go relative to the previous one, absent any kind of big injury or other extenuating circumstances.

For that reason, the numbers have begun to look pretty favorably on Texas A&M football, and you can understand why. In fact, in the entire SEC, there's only one team that has brought back more production than the Aggies, as you can see from this chart.

The Aggies trail only Vanderbilt in this important stat, which gives them a pretty favorable outlook for the upcoming season. But what if I told you that this even underrates the Aggies a little bit?

One of the factors taken into account with this chart is the number of passing yards and touchdowns returning to campus for next year. That is usually a pretty binary question of whether a team is bringing back their primary quarterback— something like a 90% or 10% proposition, based on whether the starter is returning or the team is bringing up a low-experience backup.

But the Aggies' situation was somewhat unique last year. Conner Weigman started the year as the unquestioned no. 1 in the room before getting derailed by an injury. He came back and played well in a couple of games before falling off precipitously against LSU, at which point he was replaced by Marcel Reed.

Since Conner transferred out, this makes a significant chunk of passing yards that are out the door in this statistic, some 800 out of 2700 total. That's nearly a third.

Of course, whether or not Weigman came back, Reed would be the starter after how last year went. His presence wasn't entirely germane to how things will go for the Aggies' signal caller position in 2025, in other words.

So the returning production in this significant category is actually artificially deflated for the Aggies— and they're still the second-best in that metric in the entire conference! That should be a heartening realization for Aggie fans when it comes to how much this team could improve going forward. Bright days are ahead for Texas A&M football.