Mike Elko’s first season as the Texas A&M head coach in 2024 seemed to be guiding them towards a deep playoff run, or at least even a College Football Playoff berth.
At least until the month of November.
Starting the month in the top 10 of the AP Top 25, by the time the team suffered their heartbreaking 17-7 loss on November 30 to the Texas Longhorns, the playoff hopes for the team had vanished into thin air, and their bowl game loss to the USC Trojans was a summary of how their season had gone up to that point: started out strong, and then a very questionable collapse to finish out.
CBS Sports Believes the Aggies Will Finish Unranked Again
And in CBS Sports’ article writing out one bold prediction for every SEC team, written by Brad Crawford, the hopes are not any higher for the Maroon and White as they enter year two under Elko’s leadership.
For the Aggies’ prediction, Crawford simply wrote, “Mike Elko’s team finishes the season unranked.”
Despite the still impressive first year and hopeful transfer portal pickups by the team in the offseason, CBS is not sold on the team’s potential in the 2025 season.
Crawford’s reasoning goes on to explain that the team still has to fill in the holes filled by Nic Scourton, Shemar Stewart, and Shemar Turner, who were selected in the NFL Draft this past April, and navigate around a packed season schedule against national championship contenders such as Notre Dame, Texas, and LSU.
“Following that strong debut and another top-tier transfer portal class, optimism is high in College Station, but challenges remain,” Crawford writes. “The Aggies must replace three NFL Draft picks along the defensive line, rebuild a wide receiver room that needs to gel quickly and navigate a schedule that could feature as many as five top-20 opponents. By the program’s emerging standards under Elko, anything short of SEC title contention could be viewed as an underachievement.”
Leave a Reply