TAMPA — Texas A&M coach Mike Elko has a very easy way to keep his team motivated after an 11-2 season and a College Football Playoff berth in 2025.

“I show them our trophy case and it’s empty,” he said simply during his availability with the national media Wednesday at SEC Media Days.

Fair enough.

Elko said that 2025 proved to be a mixed bag, as the team won 11 games for the first time in 30 years and made the CFP, but lost its last two games to Texas and Miami.

“We’re obviously happy with we accomplished, happy with the direction of our program, but it’s also not lost on us that we haven’t won the hardware that we’re searching for,” he said. “That gets us into a mindset of growth and getting back to work to go finish this thing a little bit better than we did last year and put ourself in a better position maybe to compete for some trophies.”

The desire to take the next step has put more pressure on quarterback Marcel Reed, who put up more than 3,500 yards of total offense and 31 touchdowns last season, but struggled down the stretch. Elko said Reed, who made a huge leap forward from 2024 to 2025, is poised to improve further this year.

“I’m really excited for his growth. I think what you saw last year was him really start to scratch the surface of what he’s capable of as a starting quarterback,” Elko said. “Been really proud of how he’s handled this offseason. I think he’s remained extremely humble and I think the work ethic has been phenomenal. I think he has put a lot of time in to become the quarterback he’s capable of becoming, and I’m really excited for what he’s going to do this fall on the field.”

Last year, the idea that Reed was just a running quarterback irritated not only Reed, but Elko as well. This year, he believes Reed is regarded in a different light.

“I think the narrative around Marcel has been pretty fair. I think he’s evolved into a dual-threat quarterback. A lot of people recognize that. At his highs he’s an elite quarterback. He knows he has to play at that consistent level. That’s not just him, that’s us as an offense. That is blocking, running, catching, that’s everything,” Elko said. “I think we know if he can play at his best consistently he has an opportunity to hit a really, really high ceiling. So I think last year there was a narrative that he couldn’t throw. I thought that was a little bit unjust. I think this year people have recognized what he’s capable of now.”

Reed will operate in a new offensive scheme in 2026 as Holmon Wiggins takes over as offensive coordinator for Collin Klein, who took the head coaching job at Kansas State. He’ll also have a dedicated quarterbacks coach in Joey Lynch, who has been on staff for the past two seasons.

Wiggins has been recognized as one of the nation’s best receiver coaches, but he hasn’t had a coordinator role before. Elko said he wanted to give Wiggins a chance to run an offense before someone else came and took him.

“He is an extremely intelligent football coach. He has a lot of experience not only at Texas A&M, but also in this conference,” Elko said of Wiggins. “I think has a resume of unbelievable offensive success. Has done a phenomenal job enhancing our wide receiver room. So just have a ton of confidence who he is as a football coach and what he’s capable of doing as he moves into that role. He’ll have to take the step of calling plays, but I think everything else he has already accomplished at an elite level in college football.”

Elko said having a dedicated quarterbacks coach should benefit Reed and fellow signal callers Brady Hart, Helaman Casuga and Eli Morcos.

“I think the biggest advantage is you have a guy in that building that spends every minute of every day worried about developing our quarterbacks,” he said. “When you have a full time quarterback coach like we do now with Coach Lynch, his sole priority every day is to create a plan not only for Marcel, but for each of our quarterbacks to grow and develop every single day. I think he’s done a phenomenal job putting a plan together, and then I think each of our quarterbacks has done a really good job putting in the extra work to come in and execute that plan. I just think the dedicated time to the position enhances the ability for a little bit more detailed growth in that room.”

Last season, the Aggies had two receivers, KC Concepcion and Mario Craver, come within 85 yards of surpassing 1,000 for the season. Concepcion was a first round draft pick of the Cleveland Browns, but Craver returned and will now be matched with a very different receiver: former Alabama wideout Isaiah Horton, who is 6-foot-4 and 208 pounds.

“I think going out and getting a guy that has the ability to have a big catch
radius, make the contested catches, who is a difficult cover regardless how close you are to him just because he can make contested catches and catch himself open,” Elko said of Horton. “Been really excited with his development through this offseason. I think he’s really bought into what we’re trying to do and become a really, really good route runner. I think when you talk about the combination of Mario (Craver), Isaiah, along with Ashton Bethel-Roman and Terry Bussey, I think we have a lot of the depth in that wide receiver room to be
really, really explosive.”

Defensively, Elko’s primary goal for 2026 is to force more turnovers. In spite of being second in the nation in sacks and tackles for loss and 18th in total defense, the Aggies were an abysmal -9 in turnover margin in 2025, forcing only 10 turnovers the entire season. Forcing turnovers, he said, takes more than being in the right place at the right time.

“I think (forcing) turnovers is a skill. I think your ability to punch and attack at the football and cause turnovers is a skill just like blocking, just like tackling, just like catching,” Elko said. “So we’ve spent some time in film work trying to show and illustrate where turnovers come from. Showed some opportunities last year where we had opportunities to create them and we didn’t do it properly. And then you try to go out all offseason and drill it to the best you can.”

There has been a fair amount of grumbling amongst SEC coaches at media days about the new nine-game conference schedule. Elko, on the other hand, took a very realistic approach to the conference making a tough schedule tougher.

“I got to have confidence because the schedule is coming and we got to be ready. We don’t have much of a choice,” he said.