This Is Easily The Toughest Stretch of the 2026 Season For Texas A&M

The Texas A&M Aggies will look towards the 2026 season as an opportunity to build on the successes they found in 2025. In year two under head coach Mike Elko, the Aggies made their first appearance in the College Football Playoff.

The Aggies will have to battle through an SEC schedule that, as always, will feature matchups against some of the best teams in the country. And this season, the schedule gets an added challenge as the SEC decided to add a ninth conference game heading into 2026.

Texas A&M will have to traverse that brutal schedule, which ranks No. 6 in terms of strength of schedule in the country per CBS Sports. The Aggies are taking on six ranked opponents in their top 25 rankings, and the final stretch of games might be the hardest on the schedule.

Texas A&M Faces Grueling Final Three-Game Stretch

Texas A&M Aggies quarterback Marcel Reed looks to throw the ball during the game between the Aggies and the Hurricanes. | Jerome Miron-Imagn Images

The Aggies will face some challenges early in the season, taking on a rising program in the Arizona State Sun Devils and a tough matchup in their second conference game, heading out on the road to take on the LSU Tigers.

However, those two early games cannot come close to the challenge the Aggies will face in the final three games of the season.

Over the course of the last three weeks of the 2026 season, when tickets to the SEC Championship game are decided, and College Football Playoff seeding starts to take shape, Texas A&M faces a daunting task.

The stretch starts with the Tennessee Volunteers heading up to College Station on Nov. 14, followed by the Oklahoma Sooners on the road in Norman on Nov. 21, and ending with the Lone Star Showdown against the Texas Longhorns on Nov. 27.

Head coach Josh Heupel looks to get his Volunteers program into the next level of national notoriety, and he's made strides over the last few years. Tennessee made an appearance in the College Football Playoff in 2024 but took a step back in 2025, finishing 8-5 on the season.

The Volunteers now head into the 2026 season looking for another answer at the quarterback spot after last year's starter, Joey Aguilar, exhausted his college eligibility. While there are some questions about who the Aggies will see under center late in the year, five-star freshman Faizon Brandon will have a good shot at the job. Brandon was the No. 3 quarterback in the 2026 recruiting class.

After that, the Aggies will head out on the road for the last time in 2026, making the short trip up north to face Brent Venables' Oklahoma squad. The Sooners made it to the College Football Playoff a year ago after an up-and-down season and finished 10-3 on the year.

The Sooners return quarterback John Mateer, who will look for a much better season than 2025 after dealing with an injury throughout the year. And as it's been with Venables at the helm, Oklahoma is likely to have one of the top defenses in the country.

And to end the season, Texas A&M hosts bitter rivals Texas. The Aggies will look to get one back against the Longhorns, as the team from Austin has taken the first two games since the rivals renewed their rivalry in 2024.

The Longhorns bring back quarterback Arch Manning, who is likely to be one of the top quarterbacks in the country with a plethora of offensive weapons around him.

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