According to Sunday’s AP Top 25 college football poll, the Texas A&M Aggies moved up from 19 to 16 after a convincing home win on Saturday over Utah State, 44-22, before 100,026 fans at Kyle Field. They are now 2-0 on the young season. The Top 12 Division 1 clubs make the playoffs that start in December, and culminates with the playing of the national championship game in the middle of January.
There’s a familiar face on the Texas A&M football roster, and he’s backup quarterback and redshirt freshman Miles O’Neill, who starred on the Marblehead High football and basketball teams during the 2022-23 school year. He was a junior that year, before transferring to the Hun School of Princeton, New Jersey, where he earned the Gatorade Football Player of the Year Award after securing the Mid-Atlantic Player of the Year Award that followed an 8-1 championship season in the fall of 2023.
O’Neill officially joined Texas A&M in 2024 as a redshirt freshman (meaning he can play for five years) but did get into one game last year against New Mexico State, completing five of six passes for 51 yards that included his first career collegiate touchdown throw. He has now just added another line to his growing resumé’ of accomplishments in the aforementioned game against Utah State.
Coming in for quarterback Marcel Reed, who exited the game in the third quarter with a back injury, O’Neill wasted no time to complete a 72-yard touchdown pass to Mario Craver, the longest play of the game for the Aggies. O’Neill, who’s No. 16 in the program, finished the game with three completed passes for 99 yards.
Texas A&M coach Mike Elko said after the game that he thought the game turned around on O’Neill’s 72-yard pass play, but expects Reed to return as the starting quarterback for Saturday night’s game at Notre Dame. That game will be nationally-televised on NBC, seen locally on Channel 10, at 7:30 p.m.
Marblehead fans can tune-in Saturday night to checkout No. 16 along the sidelines, understanding that he’s second on the depth chart as the next man up, while arguably playing the most pivotal position in any sport as a Division 1 college football quarterback.
