What did The Citadel’s head coach say about Texas A&M quarterback Marcel Reed?

Texas A&M quarterback Marcel Reed might be having a down season, but The Citadel coach Maurice Drayton still had high praise for the senior signal-caller.

“Marcel Reed, oh my goodness,” Drayton said. “I’ve used this analogy before. It’s like catching lightning in a phone booth. Good luck with that. This guy can run. He can scamper. He can move.”

He might be a dynamic player but Reed has been disappointing in his senior season. After leading the Aggies to the College Football Playoff for the first time in 2025, Reed and the entire offense slogged through the first half of the season to a 3-3 record.

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Reed is completing only 55.3% of his passes, down about 7% from last year, and averaging more than 60 fewer yards per game compared to 2025. He’s also only thrown six touchdowns to six interceptions.

But Reed hasn’t been the only problem for the offense, which has failed to score a touchdown in its two road games this year. The issues have involved the entire offense, and have persisted even as the Aggies have tried to make changes. 

“The way we practice is much better than what we’re putting out on tape,” Texas A&M running back Jamarion Morrow said. “That’s the most frustrating thing.”

The Aggies offense ranks 12th out 16 SEC teams in points per game and 14th in total yards.

Texas A&M has, for the most part, beat up on its non-Power 4 opponents during the Mike Elko era. Only a 26-20 victory over Bowling Green in 2024 was decided by single digits and the Aggies are a combined 98-0 in their last two non-Power 4 matchups.

The Bulldogs will provide a chance for Texas A&M to try and get back on track for the rest of the season, even if there likely won’t be much to take away from the game.

“We’ve got to move forward,” Elko said. “Like I told the team this morning, we’re in a situation where we have to improve and we have to get better. There’s a tremendous amount of fight in our building, in our coaching staff and in our players to do that, but we’ve got to go do it. Without doing it, words are just words.”

The Citadel enters with a losing record but did upset South Carolina State, who were ranked in the top 15 of the two major FCS polls, two weekends ago. The Bulldogs also took Charlotte to triple overtime earlier in the year.

Drayton, an alum of the school, has been the head coach since the 2023 season. The team has played both Ole Miss and Clemson during his tenure so playing in a big stadium won’t be something they haven’t dealt with previously. 

But Saturday’s attendance will still be exponentially greater than their previous high this season, which was 13,274.

“We have some silent cadences, we have some communication hand signals, things that we will utilize because it is going to be very loud,” Drayton said. “We’ve seen the schedule for a long time. We’ve been prepping these types of things in advance already.”

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This article originally published at What did The Citadel’s head coach say about Texas A&M quarterback Marcel Reed?.