Mike Elko looking for good injury luck in 2025 after ‘freak’ incidents last season

Texas A&M coach Mike Elko hopes is team’s luck will turn around when it comes to the injury bug in 2025. Some injuries are inevitable over the course of a football season, but the Aggies found themselves hit particularly hard last year.

From starting center Mark Nabou going down with a season-ending injury in the opening game to running back Le’Veon Moss suffering a knee injury in early November, Texas A&M lost some of its best players. Speaking at his press conference to kick off fall camp, Elko talked about the importance of staying healthy for the Aggies to reach their goals.

“Health matters. Keeping our best players healthy for the course of the year plays a role,” he said. “So I think when you look back at last year, the one positive on the injury front were, you didn’t have a lot of soft tissue injuries. You didn’t have a lot of things happen in practice. So for the most part, the things that happened without your ability to control them, and that as a coach is really important. You hope that maybe some of those breaks change a little bit this year with some of the guys we lost in-game.

“We lost Mark Nabou early for a really long period of time. We lost Tyreek Chappell to a freak thing for a really long period of time. Losing Le’Veon in the end, losing Rueben (Owens) in the beginning. We had some guys go down to some freak things. Usually those things balance themselves out over time. So hopefully we’re ready for a good run of luck. We certainly could use one of those for a season here at Texas A&M.”

Owens, the No. 2 running back on the Aggies roster, missed the first 14 weeks of the season before returning to play in two games. Chappell played the first two games of the year before sufferring a season-ending lower leg injury in practice.

That’s four different key players who fell victim to long term injuries and Texas A&M still managed to finish with an 8-5 record in Elko’s inaugural season. Perhaps with some better luck, they can be even more competitive in 2025.

All of the players that Mike Elko mentioned are back for the upcoming season and one would think they are eager to have a big season. They’ll get their first opportunity to remind fans of what they were missing last season when the Aggies kick off the year against UTSA on Aug. 30.