Elko eager to get '26 Aggies on the field

Friday will mark precisely four months since the Texas A&M football team last took the field. For coach Mike Elko, that’s long enough.

Coming off an 11-2 season and their first appearance in the College Football Playoff, the Aggies are expected to make another CFP run in 2026. For Elko, some of the most important steps on that road take place during spring practice.

“At this point, we’ve done everything we can (off the field). There’s not really much left to accomplish in the building, so it’s just good to get ready to get out on the grass and start playing football and start building the identity of what this team is and what this team is going to be this fall,” he said during his pre-spring press conference.

The 2025 Aggies were a veteran-laden team, as evidenced by the 23 players taking part in Pro Day next week. With nearly 50 new roster additions, the 2026 Texas A&M football team will definitely have a different look, but Elko believes the roster will be deeper in the trenches than past years.

“What we talked about the other day as a staff, which I think is really cool, is the amount of players we have that we feel like can go out there and play is probably more than it’s ever been on the offensive line, we have more SEC ready players now we’ve got to find out to what level that is,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s ultimately what we get to find out in spring, but it’s going to be a very intense competition amongst a lot of really talented offensive linemen and then, very similar defensive line-wise. You’ve got five incoming transfers, with quite a handful of young, talented, rising sophomores, some returning players. You just have a really good mix of kids that are capable of playing SEC football. Our challenge is to be able to play at an SEC championship level.”

New coaches, new roles

The offensive line, which will have at least four new starters, will be tasked with protecting quarterback Marcel Reed, who is entering his second full season as the starter. Reed accounted for 31 total touchdowns and threw for more than 3,000 yards in 2025, but struggled in late season losses to Texas and Miami. Elko said that, with Reed being more comfortable in the starting role, spring continues a refinement process for the redshirt junior.

“He now has a full season under his belt. I think he’s been through the ringer,” Elko said of Reed. “He’s got … 18, probably close to that, career starts. Last year, even though he had played some there were still a lot of situations that he himself hadn’t been in. And so you were still talking about watching other people, watching other people do things with him. You’re now watching him execute all the plays. You’re watching him execute situations. You’re watching him make decisions. And so when you do that, you’re really able to kind of specify the plan to him.”

With the departure of offensive coordinator Collin Klein, who is now the head coach at Kansas State, Reed is now working with new quarterbacks coach Joey Lynch, whose sole assignment is developing members of the quarterback corps. Elko said Reed has already put in a lot of work off the field with Lynch in an effort to improve his game.

“He’s spent a lot of time with Coach Lynch … doing a lot of things, one on one, in the mornings, in and around workouts, where he’s just coming up and doing a lot of extra film work, and a lot of that is just his mechanics, his decision making, his processing, what is he seeing? What is he feeling? Which I think takes it to another level, because you’re not talking about what if scenarios anymore,” Elko said. “You’re really fine tuning scenarios that he’s actually lived through and been through, and so I think that helps, and hopefully, ultimately, what we’re looking for is just him consistently being at his best more more often.”

Reed and Lynch will be working with a new coordinator in former receivers coach Holmon Wiggins. Elko said promoting Wiggins was the right fit for the team and playcalling would not be totally foreign to him.

“The last couple of years, Holmon called plays in the spring game. Each year, there’s been parts of practice where Holmon has called plays. Calling plays is not brand new; it’s just being brand new in this role,” Elko said. “We’ll probably do a little bit more unscripted stuff this spring, situationally, just because I think those are the those are the harder ones — those those two minute drills, those end of half situations — as a play caller. Those are the situations I always wanted to be in the most when I was still trying to figure out those calls and how that part of the game would go.”

Texas A&M will be breaking in two new coordinators this season, with Lyle Hemphill taking over for the departed Jay Bateman as the defensive coordinator. Both were internal hires, a decision Elko said made sense due to Wiggins’ and Hemphill’s comfort levels with their players and the program.

“We’ve talked about why those two made sense to be the coordinators, and then I think we had in house candidates that are very capable of doing the job at an elite level,” Elko said. “We’re always going to do what we think is best, and there will be times where we think what’s best is hiring people from other programs, and at times, what we think is best will be hiring people from within.”

The number of new faces and differing job titles hasn’t changed Elko’s view on what the team should be capable of — competing for an SEC championship and perhaps more.

“We have a unique opportunity to double down on success, which is the next step for our program,” he said.