Biggest Concern for every SEC team in 2026: Texas A&M Aggies
We continue our countdown to kick-off with our series detailing one biggest concern for every SEC team heading into 2026. Today, we head to College Station to talk about the Texas A&M Aggies.
The trenches and offensive line
What’s the biggest concern for Texas A&M this year? Sheesh, where do you begin?
Continuity isn’t necessarily key anymore in the transfer portal era of college football. It doesn’t hurt though. Texas A&M has some familiar faces and continuity coming back in 2026. The starting quarterback Marcel Reed is back, as is elite WR Mario Craver, and RB Reuben Owens. They also return three of four from the secondary.
After that though, it gets pretty dicey.
The Aggies lose their offensive coordinator, 13 starters, and ten NFL Draft Picks. That’s the most in a single draft in program history by the way. They also lose Cashius Howell off the edge and his 11.5 sacks and 14 TFLs from a season ago. Somehow, there’s still something even more concerning than replacing all that – the offensive line.
The strength of the 2025 Texas A&M team was the offensive line. Their five starters had a nation leading 177 combined career starts. Four of those five are gone, and their replacements don’t exactly feel like upgrades. Mike Elko decided to pillage other rosters in the SEC and all four projected starters for this season were starters at SEC schools a season ago. The Aggies picked up two LSU transfers, Coen Echols and Tyree Adams. Both are massive in size, but not great from a skillset standpoint. Neither graded out over 59 in PFF grades for blocking and they allowed a combined 26 pressures a season ago which were the second and third most on the team. They also picked up Trovon Baugh from the league’s worst offensive line, South Carolina. Baugh gave up the second most sacks (5), pressures (19), and penalties (7) for the Gamecocks. According to PFF, against Oklahoma he had a pass blocking grade of 5.9. That’s out of 100 by the way.
Maybe all four get coached up and perform extremely well when they get to College Station. Maybe they gel immediately and can protect Marcel Reed all year. Or, maybe they are who they are and the offensive line, and subsequently the offense as a whole, takes a giant step back. My money is on the latter. And that is Texas A&M’s biggest concern heading into 2026.
