Predicting the win total ceiling, floor for Texas A&M in 2024
Spring football is behind us and that means it’s time to analyze the 2024 season from just about every angle as the long offseason really begins. Today it’s time to take a look at Texas A&M.
On3’s Andy Staples sat down with Cody Bellaire to discuss each SEC team’s outlook with the best- and worst-case scenarios.
They both agreed the ceiling for Texas A&M is quite high, though the floor is low enough that there’s a wide range of possible outcomes for the Aggies this fall.
“I’ve got their ceiling probably a little high,” Staples said. “But if everything breaks the right way and also accounting for what I saw when (Mike) Elko took over at Duke, which was a team that played very much above its station in life… 10-2 and getting into the CFP. You have to beat Notre Dame to do that. You could probably lose to Texas, but you’ve got to beat Notre Dame and probably beat LSU.
“The floor for A&M, because again, we don’t know what this (team is). The floor is 5-7.”
CEILING: 10 wins, College Football Playoff appearance
Texas A&M’s ceiling is almost certainly a product of some serious recruiting in the last few years. The Aggies aren’t hurting for talent, even if it hasn’t necessarily been developed at the college level just yet.
But talent alone doesn’t necessarily guarantee results.
“Texas A&M is a mystery to me because we’ve got to put out of our minds they had the No. 1 recruiting class in the country two years ago because, one, that class was so ridiculously unbalanced from a positional standpoint that it almost doesn’t matter, but, two, it’s dissipated,” Staples said. “As Jimbo Fisher‘s tenure faulted, some of those guys washed out, some of them went somewhere else. That said, there’s still some very talented players on this roster and a healthy Conner Weigman is a very interesting prospect.”
In the last two years, Weigman has thrown for 1,875 yards and 16 touchdowns, against just two interceptions. He’s also run for a couple scores.
There’s another element that could also help the Aggies.
“I think the other piece of that too is Collin Klein coming to call plays,” Bellaire said. “They’re going from this old-school, pro-style offense that Jimbo was running and it’s going to be morphed into this modern scoring machine. You have to hope if you’re an Aggie fan that Collin Klein can work his magic with Conner Weigman like he sort of showed you with the guy at K-State in Avery Johnson a little bit.
“And you sort of say, ‘Hey man, this is an athletic guy taking snaps for us. He can make defenders miss in a phone booth. He can be a power runner. He’s a guy that has the arm talent to make every throw at the college level. And does Collin Klein get the most out of Conner Weigman? I don’t know. But that to me is what’s going to decide if this Texas A&M team can really hang in this new-looking SEC or if they’re going to go back to being little brother to Texas and Oklahoma.”
FLOOR: 5-7 regular season
If things don’t go well for the Aggies this fall, there’s probably one area of the team that will have come up a little short.
But just in general the roster may not be as good as many in College Station are hoping. That was the consensus Bellaire got in speaking to industry colleagues.
“To your point at the top of this, they mentioned just how beaten this roster really was, especially on the defensive side of the ball,” Bellaire said. “They brought in 15 transfers on the defensive side alone. Guys like Will Lee and De’Rickey Wright are going to help shore up the secondary. They brought in Scooby Williams and Solomon DeShields to help replace the loss of Edgerrin Cooper at linebacker.
“But most importantly they brought back a guy that they believe is going to be a captain of this defense in College Station native Nic Scourton from Purdue, who’s arguably one of the top defensive players in the country regardless of position.”
Will those transfer portal additions be enough to shore up the defense? That remains to be seen.
But what kind of unit the Aggies trot out there this fall will be key.
“This is a completely different defense for Texas A&M under Mike Elko,” Bellaire said. “It’s just a matter of getting everyone on the same page in a hurry. I think Elko’s shown that. When they got to Duke they turned that team around and turned it into a real player in that conference. There’s no reason not to think he can’t do that at Texas A&M in Year 1.”