Texas A&M offensive guard Ar’maj Reed-Adams chuckled to himself Tuesday afternoon when asked if quarterback Marcel Reed’s Heisman Trophy candidacy was anything that the team ever discussed.
“Oh, yeah, the offensive line room, we’ve got a mission,” Reed-Adams said with a smile. “We’ve got a mission. Project: Get Marcel the Heisman.”
Reed, a sophomore, has at the very least already played himself into Heisman Trophy conversation with one game left in the college football regular season.
He might safely purchase a nonrefundable flight to the award’s New York City ceremony if he can ace A&M’s final and most critical test.
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The No. 3 Aggies (11-0, 7-0 SEC) will play for an undefeated regular season, a guaranteed trip to the conference championship game and likely assured passage into the College Football Playoff on Friday at No. 17 Texas (8-3, 5-2) in the second installment of the revived Lone Star Showdown at Austin’s DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium.
It represents a seismic opportunity for for the Aggies under second-year head coach Mike Elko, and for Reed, it represents a chance to build upon an already impressive track record against premier opponents.
He passed for 360 yards, two touchdowns and orchestrated a last-second rally in an early-season win at Notre Dame that snapped A&M’s big-game road drought. He totaled 310 yards of offense and four touchdowns in a win at LSU and silenced one of college football’s most-ferocious environments in the process. That doesn’t include the 298 second-half yards he threw in a historic comeback vs. South Carolina or the four touchdowns he scored in a narrow victory over Arkansas.
The Nashville, Tenn., native is not yet a consensus lock for the award’s podium position, though, in large part because of the gaudy numbers and similar team success that the field’s top contenders boast. Reed, per FanDuel Sportsbook, has the fifth-best Heisman Trophy odds behind Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza, Ohio State’s Julian Sayin, Notre Dame’s Jeremiyah Love and Vanderbilt’s Diego Pavia.
Heisman Trophy ballots are due Dec. 8 — two days after the SEC championship game — and finalists will be announced five days after that.
Reed has passed for fewer yards than Sayin and Pavia, thrown for fewer touchdowns than Mendoza and can’t match the statistics that Love has accumulated as the nation’s top back. Indiana and Ohio State, like A&M, can both clinch undefeated regular seasons this weekend while Notre Dame is on track to join the three in the 12-team playoffs.
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Suffice to say, Reed has company if not stiff competition. A nation-best third ranked road win is a real-deal résumé builder, though, especially one that could knock a rival out of the postseason.
The Longhorns defense will be among the best that Reed and the Aggies have played yet this season. Notre Dame and Missouri’s units, per Pro Football Focus, are the only two with better overall grades. The Texas pass rush is considered better than both and ranked below only four teams nationwide this season, according to PFF’s metrics.
Reed was limited to 146 yards and an interception when Texas beat the A&M 17-7 last season to clinch a league title game berth. The Aggies were less dynamic of an offense then, though, and hadn’t yet added the electric wide receiver duo of Mario Craver and KC Concepcion that’s given Reed one of the best offensive toolsheds in the conference.
The Longhorns have already played two of the Heisman Trophy frontrunners this season. They held Sayin to only 126 yards and one touchdown in their season opener three months ago but still lost to Ohio State by one score. Pavia totaled more than 400 yards of offense and four touchdowns, but couldn’t keep pace with Texas quarterback Arch Manning and company in a one-score Longhorns win earlier this month.
“You can probably argue that Marcel Reed is the most dynamic of all those guys [that we’ve faced this season],” Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said Monday in his weekly news conference. “What it prepares you for is ‘OK, where did we break down where they hurt us? How do we rectify that and fix that?’ We can go back to some of that old tape.”
The Aggies will hope that Friday’s tape can help sway voters in their signal caller’s favor.
“We already know, if we’re out there on the field, and Marcel is out there,” Reed-Adams said, “he’s got a chance to win every award in the country.”
Texas Tech’s Jacob Rodriguez, A&M’s Cashius Howell named finalists for Bednarik AwardTexas A&M QB Marcel Reed named finalist for Davey O’Brien Award
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