In No. 3 Texas A&M football’s return to Kyle Field after a month-long hiatus and its first 11 a.m. game since Week 2, the Aggies looked like they overslept their alarms for an entire half, with the Kyle Field crowd groaning as the South Carolina Gamecocks took a 30-3 lead into the break.
But, after redshirt sophomore quarterback Marcel Reed looked like a man resurrected in the second half, A&M completed the largest comeback in program history to remain undefeated and leave the 12th Man chanting its quarterback’s name as he left with a 31-30 victory.
“I’m not lost for words very much, but I was lost for words with the team in the locker room after the game,” coach Mike Elko said. “A lot of that emotion was just pride in who they were, how they conducted themselves. There’s not a lot of teams that have a culture and a core that will just keep going.”
Since 2004, Southeastern Conference teams were 0-286 in games trailing by 27 points or more. After the game, Elko left Aggieland with a simple message.
“That’s 1-286 now.”
Comebacks, chants, chills
He’s done it all year on a smaller scale, but Elko must have painted his Mona Lisa of halftime speeches.
“All we talked about was we have an identity, we’re a good football team,” Elko said. “If we start thinking that’s not who we are, if we start thinking we’re something else, if we start trying to play a different way, that’s not us.”
With their backs against the wall, A&M went for it on 4th-and-12 on the opening drive of the second half, which Reed converted with his legs. Two plays later, Reed found redshirt freshman wide receiver Izaiah Williams for his first catch of the season — a 27-yard touchdown. Suddenly, the Aggies had the faintest whisper of a pulse.
A fourth-down stop from the A&M defense put the ball back in Reed’s hands, where he promptly lobbed a rainbow to redshirt freshman WR Ashton Bethel-Roman right up the middle of the defense for a 39 yard touchdown to make it 30-17. Heartbeat detected.
A three-and-out had Kyle Field believing. Bethel-Roman got loose for 76 yards, sacrificing his health in the process of setting the Aggies up in the red zone. A pop pass to graduate student tight end Nate Boerkircher brought the Maroon and White within one score. The Aggies had awoken.
Then, after a punt backed A&M up to the 1-yard line, Reed dragged his team 99 yards before graduate student running back EJ Smith plunged in from the four to give A&M its first lead of the day. Pandemonium.
Reed finished with 439 yards, including going 16-for-20, 298 yards and three touchdowns in the second half. After taking the final knee to officially end the game, Reed embraced an emotional Elko before seeing it off with the 12th Man.
“Coach Elko has done something a lot of coaches haven’t done,” Reed said. “He has changed the program and culture of the team. There is so much love and brotherhood. We are playing for each other, but we are playing for him, too.”
First-half meltdown
In a day that started with Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger reporting that Elko had signed a contract extension to make him one of the 10 highest-paid coaches in the sport, the good will was quickly sucked out of the stadium.
Redshirt sophomore QB LaNorris Sellers and Co. took the ball first and scored on back-to-back possessions, including a 50-yard snipe to redshirt sophomore WR Vandrevius Jacobs.
Despite junior WR KC Concepcion’s best efforts on a pair of 40-plus-yard plays, the Aggies couldn’t find the end zone. Elko entrusted graduate student kicker Randy Bond to knock down a couple of field goal tries and was rewarded with three total points and a 10-3 deficit.
The Maroon and White faced their largest deficit of the season after all-world sophomore edge rusher Dylan Stewart teleported into the backfield and blew up a quarterback-running back exchange. Reed threw the ball backward amidst the chaos and the Garnet and Black returned it for a touchdown to make it 17-3.
Freak-of-nature junior WR Nyck Harbor put the icing on the first-half misery cake for A&M when he found a soft spot in the coverage, spun around and blazed through the Aggie secondary for an 80-yard touchdown to make it 27-3.
“I just felt like they were just outplaying us,” junior linebacker Taurean York said. “They were out-executing us, they were out-efforting us. That’s kind of what South Carolina does against us.”
LaNorris Sellers: Aggie killer
Despite the campfire horror stories still whispered in Aggieland about Sellers’ performance in last year’s battle in Columbia, South Carolina, in 2025 he has hardly been the Heisman Trophy contender that many predicted the Gamecocks’ hometown hero to be. However, Sellers looked every bit the sentient ball of machetes he was against A&M last season in the first half.
Sellers ran, threw and even caught the ball to account for 237 yards of offense and two touchdowns, including the two 50-plus-yard scores. Offensive play-caller Mike Furrey used a flurry of misdirection to keep the Aggies guessing and keep redshirt senior defensive end Cashius Howell from teeing off on the tackles.
Juxtapose the Gamecock offense riding Sellers to Reed throwing two interceptions and having several more bounce off the hands of South Carolina defenders, and one could make the case that the scoreline was generous to A&M.
A&M seemed to solve its Sellers issue in the second half, finding more success keeping him in the pocket and holding the offense to 76 yards. While Howell attracted attention, Elko and Co. dialed up pressure to bring Sellers down for four sacks to seal the game and the comeback for the Aggies.
“I don’t even really know what just happened to be honest with you,” Elko said. “A whole lot of heart left on the field. A whole lot of support from a great group of fans.”
With a Lonestar Showdown looming in a fortnight, A&M will take on Samford on Saturday, Nov. 22, at 11 a.m. at Kyle Field for its final tune-up.
