COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- Looking for a spark in the third quarter while trailing LSU, Texas A&M coach Mike Elko benched starting quarterback Conner Weigman and handed the ball to Marcel Reed.
A play later, that spark caught fire, with Reed scoring on an 8-yard touchdown run on his first play then leading the Aggies to four touchdowns and a field goal on their next five drives to power No. 14 Texas A&M to a 38-23 win over No. 8 LSU in front of 108,852, the third-largest crowd ever at Kyle Field.
It was a remarkable turn of events, with LSU leading 17-7 at halftime. The Tigers had won 104 straight games when leading by 10 points or more at the half, the longest such streak in the country, according to ESPN Research. The Aggies had lost 26 straight games when down by 10 or more at the break.
But Reed's jolt of adrenaline ended both streaks and led the Aggies to their first 5-0 start in the SEC since joining the league in 2012.
Texas A&M struggled to find many openings in the LSU defense in the first half, with Weigman going 6-of-18 for 64 yards as the Aggies managed just 3.6 yards per play. But after Reed entered the game with 8:10 left in the third quarter, Texas A&M outscored LSU 31-6, averaging 9.9 yards per play.
Reed threw only two passes, going 2-for-2 for 70 yards, including a 54-yarder to Noah Thomas, and running nine times for 62 yards and three touchdowns.
"Obviously unbelievable credit to Marcel Reed to be ready to go tonight," Elko said. "It certainly wasn't Conner's fault. There weren't a lot of open windows. We couldn't get the passing game unglued at all. We couldn't call it right. I couldn't get them to run it right. We couldn't get open. It was just a litany of problems. Conner didn't throw it well at times. We just felt like we needed a spark, and we pulled the trigger and went with Marcel and what a spark he gave us."
Weigman said the Aggies' calls were simple, just often zone-read plays where he read the defender and then went.
"They were just crashing, crashing at our running backs," Reed said. "If they crashed, I pull the ball and run. And you see they did it a lot and I got a lot of opportunities to get some space and run, and they didn't really make any adjustments. So that's all it was."
The Aggies' defense also turned it on, getting to LSU's Garrett Nussmeier, who was 25-for-50 passing for 405 yards with two touchdowns but threw three second-half interceptions. Two of those went to BJ Mayes, a defensive back from Houston who spent his first two seasons at Incarnate Word and last season at UAB and had just recently made the move from corner to nickelback.
"It was beautiful, my journey," Mayes said. "My first time playing nickel in my life. So to come in, as fast as I did, pick the game up and then start for a big-time game, LSU, that was amazing."
The Aggies' journey has also been something. They lost their season opener at home 23-13 against Notre Dame, the first big-time matchup of the Elko era. This game would be a test of how far they have come since that setback.
"It's a huge win," Reed said. "It was LSU. We all had a chip on our shoulder. We didn't really think they respected us coming into Kyle Field. Getting that spark in the second half and getting the team going, there was no going back from that at all."
Texas A&M has now won seven straight, matching its win total from last year's 7-5 season that led to a $77.6 million buyout of coach Jimbo Fisher, and are 5-0 in a conference for the first time since 1998, when the Aggies were in the Big 12. Elko took over a program that had signed the No. 1 class in 2022 then went 11-11.
"The whole rhetoric about this program was NIL, mercenaries and selfishness and all of those things," Elko said.
But the win over LSU is a validation for Elko's vision for what Texas A&M can be. His team outrushed LSU 242-24, and his defense forced Nussmeier into his first career three-interception game.
"This is a real program," Elko said. "It's not fake. I'm not a politician running this program talking fast and BS-ing everybody."
Next week, the 7-1 Aggies head to South Carolina seeking to maintain their lead in the SEC race. But Elko wasn't looking too far forward just yet.
"The price of success and the price of winning games like that is you have a target on your back," Elko said. "What 5-0 means is we're really going to have a heck of a time to get to 6-0."