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By Matt Audilet
Contributing Sports Writer
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The Texas A&M Aggies started their 2025 college football campaign with an 11-0 record, but closed out the year with two unfortunate back-to-back losses.
Following a regular-season finale loss to the rival Texas Longhorns, the No. 7 seed Aggies fell to the No. 10 seed Miami Hurricanes in the first round of the College Football Playoff.
Marcel Reed and the Texas A&M offense put up an absolute dud in the postseason loss, falling with a 10-3 final score at College Station's Kyle Field. Reed completed 25 of his 39 pass attempts for 237 yards, zero touchdowns and two interceptions as the Aggies' season came to a crashing halt.
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According to college football insider Josh Pate, Mike Elko and Texas A&M are now facing a major decision regarding Reed's future with the program.
Reed, who drew significant Heisman Trophy chatter early in his 2025 campaign, combined for zero touchdowns and four interceptions in the Aggies' final two games of the season.
“How will Mike Elko assess his quarterback situation?” Pate said on "Josh Pate’s College Football Podcast," via On3 Sports. “You watched Marcel Reed [Saturday] and there was really nothing happening. That’s a tough defense to go against. I get it. But he only threw for 225 or more in one of his final six games. Four of his final six games had multiple INTs.
"Marcel Reed is a phenomenal person, phenomenal kid. He is not a bad football player. I had a Heisman ticket on Marcel Reed," Pate continued. "It’s always feast or famine when you talk about guys. It’s not that. There’s not famine at all. He played really, really good and they sort of locked down on him. You’ve got to be a really, really good player to sort of break through that ice. He hasn’t been that. I don’t wanna talk about his ceiling, because I don’t know what that is, but he was not that this year.”
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Pate believes the current college football landscape could push the Aggies to move on from Reed before the 2026 season.
“They’ve got to look at Marcel Reed,” Pate added. “This is one of those conversations that we talked about. When we entered the NIL era, you’re basically professionalizing college football. It doesn’t make me feel great because I think college football should feel different than the NFL. College sports should feel different than pro sports. But when you professionalize it, you start to have really different sounding conversation than you used to have in college football. Because this 10 years ago would be, ‘Marcel’s just got to get a little bit better. We hope he makes a leap this year to next year. The staff’s gotta get behind him and support him.’ Now it’s, ‘Well, if he’s not good enough we’ll just go get a guy out of the portal.’"
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“I don’t know that that’s gonna happen," he continued. "What I’m saying is, it’s a conversation that’s gonna happen in that building. It’s absolutely a conversation that’s gonna happen. That’s a place that spends a lot of money on football players. That’s a place that would be desirable for portal quarterbacks."
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