COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) – After every Texas A&M football game this season, quarterback Marcel Reed and his roommate, safety Dalton Brooks, fire up a replay of the game broadcast and talk through the team’s performance.
Often, linebacker Taurean York walks down the street from his house and joins in the discussion.
After seventh-seeded A&M suffered a season-ending 10-3 loss to No. 10 Miami in the first round of the College Football Playoff, Reed said he was unsure of how that conversation will go.
“I don’t know what is going to be said, but it’s going to be a real long conversation,” Reed said, occasionally staring down at the table in front of him. “And, I think we’re going to talk a lot about the future, too, just what’s going to change.”
The same could be said for the majority of Aggieland in the days and weeks to come.
For 11 games, the Aggies positioned themselves for a truly historic season. The final two games brought the season to a screeching halt. How does anyone make sense of that dichotomy? Ultimately, was this season successful?
“This is a really good team,” Reed said after the game. “Had some minor setbacks in some games, but ultimately, this team worked over the offseason and had a goal in line and we put our heads down and went the entire season, regardless of what people were saying on the outside. We were worried about ourselves and had a pretty successful season.”
Was this A&M team a product of its cushy Southeastern Conference schedule? Through the Aggies’ 7-1 conference run, A&M’s conference opponent winning percentage was 28.1%. It’s the reason the Aggies finished fourth in the conference as a part of a quartet of 7-1 teams, none of which the Aggies faced head-to-head.
The Aggies held the No. 1 third down defense in the country, with teams converting on 22.7% of their opportunities. However, the conversion rate drastically differed in the three Associated Press-ranked teams A&M played this season. Ranked teams converted at a 39% clip. The nine unranked teams A&M played converted 16.8% of their chances.
A&M did beat a good Notre Dame team that had a legitimate argument to be a part of the playoff field, but they also played five teams this season that later fired their head coaches.
Ill-timed penalties, turnovers and inaccurate passing plagued the Aggies at times this season, but in most of these games, A&M found a way to fight back to a win. When the opposing talent raised, those mistakes became harder to cover.
And yet, A&M started the season 11-0 for the first time since 1992 and earned a No. 3 ranking for the first time since 1995.
How should quarterback Marcel Reed be judged this season?
Reed, after being promoted as a Heisman Trophy candidate, closed out the season with two games that each featured no touchdown passes and two interceptions. Six of his total 10 interceptions came in his last three games against power conference opponents: South Carolina, Texas and Miami.
Reed wanted to finish the season around a 70% completion percentage, he said before the season started. He fell short of that mark, closing out the season completing 62% of his passes. After the win at Notre Dame, Elko announced Reed had arrived as a passer. That proclamation might have been a little premature.
That being said, Reed returns next season as the head-and-shoulders leader of an A&M offense that will lose several pieces of its offensive line and a few key pieces of its running back stable. Improvement must continue if the Aggies want to continue their upward trajectory a year from now.
“He’s still a young quarterback,” Elko said Saturday. “I still think there’s a lot of room for development and growth from him. I think you saw major strides this year, but I still think there’s a ceiling there that he’s not close to hitting.”
A&M’s offensive line had aspirations to win the Joe Moore Award and ended up semifinalists. Saturday, they did not look the part and made Reed’s day even more difficult. According to Pro Football Focus, only Trey Zuhn III had a pass blocking grade above 70. Reuben Fatheree II, Chase Bisontis and Dametrious Crownover had pass blocking grades of 29, 30.8 and 37.9, respectively. The unit allowed Reed to be sacked seven times and pressured 18 times in the game.
So, was A&M’s season a success?
If any Aggie fan was told in August that A&M would go 11-2 this season and earn a berth in the College Football Playoff, they would take it 10 out of 10 times. This column predicted A&M would be 8-4 until they proved otherwise, and this Aggie squad did just that.
Under Elko, the Aggie program has proven to be foundationally and culturally healthy. They marched through the last two seasons slaying demons that have plagued teams of years past.
At this point, only the biggest hurdles remain – beating Texas, playing for an SEC title and making a real postseason run. The fact that Elko has put the Aggies in this position in two short years is impressive, but success comes with expectations. The true test of this program’s trajectory will be its ability to continually live up to and surpass those expectations on an annual basis.
“I don’t hope it’s trending [in the right direction],” Elko said. “It is trending. I see the direction it’s trending. Eight wins to 11 wins – I see the direction that it’s trending. We’re going to finish the season ranked. That hasn’t happened for a while around here. What has to happen? We have to continue to elevate. We have to continue to move this thing in the right direction. We’ve got to continue to make positive strides building this program. We were not an elite program, ready to compete for a national championship when we took over. We’re still not. We’re working to become it. We’re battling to become it. Clearly, these last two games have shown there’s still areas we have to continue to grow.”
How successful was this season?
Ask again this time next year.
KBTX senior Texas A&M sportswriter Travis L. Brown can be reached at travis.brown@kbtx.com .
KBTX Senior Texas A&M Sportswriter(KBTX)
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