Texas A&M Football: Kellen Mond’s career reaching crescendo

One the of greatest quarterbacks in Texas A&M football’s storied history is coming to an end. Where does Kellen Mond rank headed into the final weeks?

A career that featured a lot of early bumps and bruises has risen up to achieve greatness, in that of Texas A&M football’s Kellen Mond. The senior quarterback went from an athletic, raw freshman  to one of the country’s better signal callers by the time he was a senior. Mond is still far from perfect, but he’s leaving the Aggies in much better shape than he found them.

Mond arrived to a program and coach that were stagnant. Texas A&M football started off its SEC tenure well, due in large part to Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel. After recording 11-2 and 9-4 seasons in his two years, head coach Kevin Sumlin fell into a rut of three-straight, 8-5 campaigns.

Mond and the since-transferred Nick Starkel split the starts in a 2017 season that featured ups and downs for each signal caller, as A&M finished 7-6, ending the Sumlin era

Jimbo Fisher came to College Station with a profile of churning out first-round NFL quarterbacks at Florida State. He quickly turned Mond into an efficient, well-studied, while-still-explosive general of the Aggie offense.

Since he’s taken over the full-time job under Fisher, Mond is 23-10 as a starter and set just about every quarterback school record (8,952 career passing yard, 68 touchdowns; 10,406 total yards, 87 total touchdowns), while also having his team on the doorstep of a major bowl game or possibly even the College Football Playoff.

Despite the mostly-quality play across his time with Texas A&M football, there seems to be a great amount of disrespect for his career. The knocks are that he doesn’t show up well in big games, is still inconsistent with his accuracy and has become too conservative, just to name a few things.

The 6-1 record this season has quelled some of the disdain for his game, especially after the 41-38 win against No. 4 Florida, which came immediately after the 52-24, shellacking A&M took against Alabama.

He’s avoided turnovers for the most part, shown improved accuracy at times and used his athleticism to make plays out of the pocket when the opportunities present themselves. A run like this would usually draw more cheers.

He’s had one of the best careers in the school’s history. He’s answered many of the doubters’ questions, however some still question whether he can ever just get in the argument for the greatest QB in school history.

Texas A&M football fans are insatiable, like many fan bases, but they’re also on another level in a lot of ways. This is the same program that in 2005, when the Aggies went 5-6, averaged nearly 80,000 fans for home games, when Kyle Field’s capacity was a little over 82,000.

Aggie fans have high expectations and are intense followers of the program – just being good for a long time isn’t enough for them. The argument in favor of Mond, is where he’s taken the program over his time though. It’s been a slower, more methodical rise, as opposed to Manziel’s meteoric ascent in two years time.

They were also spoiled by the Manziel years. What the latter accomplished in a two-year span is nearly impossible to match. Not to mention, the scheme A&M ran with him is polar opposite to the one now.

Mond doesn’t quite produce the same can’t-miss, don’t-leave-your-seat highlights, but he’s carried the program forward onto the precipice of its highest heights since it joined the SEC. Obviously with two games left at Auburn and at Tennessee, there’s still some work he’s got to do.

If he can win both and put the team in position for a single-digit finish in the polls and can capture a win in the bowl game or a CFP appearance, he deserves to be in the conversation near the top of A&M quarterback hierarchy. His improvements, the program’s status when Mond departs and the record-breaking stats beg that kind of attention.