Texas A&M spent last season looking like the SEC’s next powerhouse. The Aggies won 11 straight to open the year and made the program’s first College Football Playoff. And Mike Elko, who became the third A&M coach to start a season with 11 wins, got a new six-year, $69M contract extension that runs through the 2031 season. However, ESPN analyst Paul Finebaum believes the Aggies’ season has been a dull follow-up to last year’s 11-2 campaign, which he now calls a “mirage.” At 2-2, Texas A&M has done little to change his view.
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This season, A&M was ranked No. 9 when Kentucky came to Kyle Field as a 17-point underdog and won 31-21. A week later, LSU won 35-6 in Baton Rouge and outgained the Aggies 506-197 in total yards. Now, Texas A&M is 0-2 in the SEC and out of the AP poll. On the Chuck & Bo Show, Finebaum was asked about Texas A&M’s slow start after many expected Mike Elko and the Aggies to be among the SEC teams competing for the conference title.
“Well, I think last year was a mirage,” Finebaum said during Thursday’s episode of the “Chuck & Bo Show” on October 1. “Quite frankly, they had a really soft schedule. Having said that, they won a game in Notre Dame, which said something about the program. But for the most part, they were able to avoid until the end the tough games. I think the Texas game just crushed them, and then they should have lost to South Carolina. But a lot of schools should have lost to South Carolina and end up not losing.
“The Marcel Reed interception against Miami, I just think, has haunted them throughout the offseason. You expect a player to come back after that. He didn’t. So I still think they’re a better team, and I’ll go and die on this hill thinking Mike Elko is a top-flight coach. I know a lot of people like to throw stuff like that in your face, but I do believe that. I just don’t have any idea why Texas A&M can’t win consistently, though.”
Though Finebaum criticized the program for its lack of consistent success, he still expressed hope for Elko, pointing to his track record and what he has already done at Texas A&M. The Aggies finished 7-1 in SEC play and climbed as high as No. 3 in the polls in 2025 before losing their final regular-season game against Texas and the CFP opener against Miami.
This season, the Aggies have struggled to find the same consistency on both sides of the ball. Quarterback Marcel Reed, who threw for 3,169 yards and 25 touchdowns last season, went 10-for-26 for 106 yards at LSU on Sep. 26 and has six touchdowns against four interceptions through four games this season.
Elko also promoted Holmon Wiggins to offensive coordinator after Collin Klein left, while the defense that carried Texas A&M last season lost three defensive linemen to the NFL Draft and failed to record a sack in its last game.
Texas and Georgia are currently sitting near the top while several other programs have struggled to make a similar jump. With the transfer portal and NIL changing how teams build their rosters, the biggest question remains why more programs haven’t used those resources to close the gap: an argument that applies to Texas A&M.
“I was on a show about a year ago; I think it was this week, when we announced the new SEC schedule, the nine-game schedule, and one of my panelists said, ‘There’s just no such thing as a bad SEC game,'” Finebaum added on the podcast. “Well, you know what? I can show you about five of them this weekend and next weekend and the week after.”
Finebaum’s point is that simply having SEC teams play one another does not automatically make every matchup compelling. He believes the transfer portal can help a program quickly improve, as Vanderbilt did with Diego Pavioa, but it can also expose a team’s lack of depth when key players leave.
That argument applies to Texas A&M, which has had the resources to build a competitive roster but has not gotten the same results this season. The Aggies lost key pieces from last year’s defense to the NFL Draft, while changes on the offense have yet to produce the same consistency.
For Elko, the challenge now is getting the roster back to the level expected of an SEC contender as the next game is against Arkansas on Saturday, with A&M favored by two touchdowns. If the Aggies beat the Razorbacks, the mirage talk could die down, but if they lose, Finebaum’s analysis could be deemed right about consistency.