No. 10 Texas A&M and Arizona State both walked away from Week 1 with blowout wins. Now comes the part where the real measuring stick shows up.
The Aggies and Sun Devils meet Saturday in College Station, Texas, in a nonconference matchup that should tell a lot more than either team’s opener did. Texas A&M opened with a 50-0 rout of Missouri State, and the 67 yards it allowed were the fewest in Mike Elko’s 27 games as the Aggies’ coach. Arizona State followed with a 70-7 hammering of Morgan State, a result that tied for the second-most points in school history behind the 79 scored against Colorado State in 1969.
Elko didn’t waste time making clear what he thinks of the step up in class.
"Games like this are important," Elko told reporters. "I think they matter.
I think they matter to our fan base. It's going to be a huge challenge for us.
This is a really talented team. This will be a really big challenge for us."
The biggest reason for that challenge may be Arizona State quarterback Cutter Boley, who announced himself in a big way in his Sun Devils debut. The Kentucky transfer went 21 of 27 for 387 yards and six touchdowns against Morgan State, tying Andrew Walter (2004) and Danny White (1971) for second-most touchdown passes in school history. He sits one behind record-holder Mike Pagel (1981).
"It's awesome to see him have success," said Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham. "I'm glad he's here. He's a great person, awesome to coach on game day, and he's got great energy."
Boley’s path to this point wasn’t all smooth. He started last season at Kentucky and finished with 2,160 passing yards, 15 touchdowns and 12 interceptions.
Against Morgan State, though, he was sharp from the start, and Arizona State’s offense piled up numbers across the board. The Sun Devils had three players go over 100 receiving yards for the first time since at least 1996: Reed Harris led with 137, Grayson Rigdon added 110 and Omarion Miller finished with 102.
Elko saw enough to know the Aggies are in for a much different test than they got in Week 1.
"This week will be a really, really big test for us," Elko said. "We're going to face a very talented offense."
Texas A&M quarterback Marcel Reed also had a productive opener, completing 21 of 30 passes for 233 yards and two touchdowns in his third season as the starter. Reed is coming off a 2025 season in which he threw for 3,169 yards and 25 touchdowns against 12 interceptions, and Elko liked what he saw in the season debut.
"There were two drops, a couple of throwaways that I thought were throwaways and a couple of balls I'm sure he wished he'd thrown it better," Elko said. "I thought there was a lot of progress in him going through progressions and reads. ... Completing a high percentage of his passes was good."
Arizona State will also have to deal with the environment at Kyle Field, where 102,733 fans can pack the stadium. Dillingham said the answer is simple, even if the setting isn’t.
"You got to be able to block it out," Dillingham said. "Block out the noise.
Take what you know and execute the play. All the other stuff is noise.
It's the definition of noise. We gotta be able to do our job as many times as we can do it, over and over again, as hard as we can for 60 minutes."
Texas A&M won the only previous meeting, beating Arizona State 38-17 on Sept. 5, 2015, in Houston. The Aggies recorded nine sacks that day, including four by Daeshon Hall and two from Myles Garrett, now an NFL star. Dillingham was on Arizona State’s staff then as a 25-year-old offensive graduate assistant.
"I've tried to erase it from memory," Dillingham said.
In Other News...
Sam Leavitt Faces An Early Big 12 Test Arizona State Fans Should Track
Week 1 gave Big 12 quarterbacks a pretty favorable start, with most of them working against Group of Six or FCS defenses rather than the kind of fronts that expose real issues. For Arizona State fans, that makes the early conversation around Sam Leavitt especially worth watching, because the league-wide sample still says more about how these passers handled the moment than how theyll hold up when the schedule tightens.
Week 2 should tell a much clearer story, as several of the conferences top quarterbacks are headed into matchups against Power Four defenses. Leavitt is part of that group Arizona State supporters need to keep an eye on, because the first real test in league play can quickly separate a clean opening act from something more revealing about what the Sun Devils have at quarterback. [Read more 🡒]