For once, the Texas A&M Aggies were on the positive end of a game winning drive. With the running joke around the fans and their “battered Aggie syndrome”, after a 41-40 win over the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, they get to be the team celebrating at the end of the night.
Quarterback Marcel Reed led a game-winning drive, finding Nate Boerkircher with 13 seconds left in the contest, for the winning touchdown. This was the Aggies first non-conference road win vs a top-10 team since 1979.
Nearly 50 years later, Reed’s clutch factor delivers one of the programs biggest wins this decade. Now inserted near the top of the Heisman race, the signal-caller showed off his ability to command the field in the biggest moment of the game.
Sep 13, 2025; South Bend, Indiana, USA; Texas A&M Aggies quarterback Marcel Reed (10) runs the ball as Notre Dame Fighting Irish safety Tae Johnson (9) defends during the second half at Notre Dame Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Trevor Ruszkowski-Imagn Images / Trevor Ruszkowski-Imagn Images
For head coach Mike Elko, the poise shown by his signal-caller is nothing new to him, he expected this from his quarterback. Between the maturity shown in the off-season, to his command of the locker room, Reed has become the prominent piece the Aggies have needed on offense.
“It’s the third time in a row. That’s Auburn, that’s the bowl game, and tonight’s game [Notre Dame], that he led us on a game-winning drive. I said that al off-season, that that was a big piece of it for him, that in those moments he has been very good.”
Reed was 4-9 with 54 yards and a touchdown on the final drive, while also rushing for 10 yards. Of the team’s total yards on the game-winning drive, the Aggies signal-caller accounted for 82 percent (64 of 76) of their offensive yards.
“That got overshadowed last year, obviously because we lost those games, but he [Reed] has been really good in those moments. We had a lot of confidence in him tonight.”
For Reed, and for the Aggies, this signals a changing of the guards. What was once believed to be a program cursed to mediocrity and heartbreak, the Aggies quarterback has broken through the stigma, leading his time one of their biggest wins in recent memory, and the biggest win in Elko’s tenure.
It’s easy to forget what the rest of the game, and his stat line looked like, if he delivers in the moments that matters most. For the Aggies, he does, and for Elko, this is the confidence and the swagger the team has been looking for.
Now they get to enter the bye week for some much needed rest, but they also enter it with newfound confidence, believing in a quarterback who can deliver when they need him the most.
