QB Mond leaves A&M with a winning legacy
Kellen Mond will leave Texas A&M as the Aggies’ all-time top quarterback. He has one final goal: end on a high note with an
Orange Bowl win.
When Kellen Mond arrived at Texas A&M ahead of the 2017 season, he had one goal in mind, one he has thoroughly accomplished.
“I wanted to just leave this place a lot better than when I came in,” the senior quarterback said Tuesday, reflecting on his four-year journey. “… I definitely think I’ve done that already.”
Regardless of what happens in Saturday’s Orange Bowl between Mond’s fifth-ranked Aggies and the No. 13 North Carolina Tar Heels, Mond’s individual legacy at Texas A&M is set.
Forty-three career starts, school records, lifting the Texas A&M program to heights it has rarely seen.
But one final win on Saturday — in a New Year’s Six bowl game, no less — will give Mond closure that the Aggies should be in the conversation for national championship contention after he leaves.
“Our mindset each and every week is that we have something to prove,” Mond said. “I don’t think it’s anything to prove to other people, but we just want to continue to get better as a team and continue to grow, and I think that’s just the main thing in our mindset each and
every week that we play.”
A win on Saturday will all but clinch a top-five finish for Texas A&M. The Aggies (8-1) have only finished a season with a top-five ranking in The Associated Press poll three times before.
They were ranked No. 1 after the 1939 season when Homer Norton led Texas A&M to a perfect 11-0 season capped by a win in the Sugar Bowl. The Aggies were also No. 5 in 1956 after a 9-0-1 season under coach Bear Bryant and in 2012, their first season in the Southeastern Conference and first under former coach Kevin Sumlin.
The Aggies stagnated after that SEC introduction, going 9-4 in 2013 and then never winning more than eight games in Sumlin’s final four seasons. That included a 7-6 record in Mond’s freshman season.
The Aggies have gone 25-10 in their three seasons since, with Jimbo Fisher at the helm and Mond under center fulltime. Mond holds Texas A&M’s career records for passing yards (9,429), passing touchdowns (71), completions (785), attempts (1,332) and total offense (11,001).
“He’s really changed
A&M since he’s got here,” sophomore running back Isaiah Spiller said. “All the years that he’s been here, we’ve just gotten better each and every year. …
He’s been a great leader for our team, and I just want people to remember Kellen as a great football player and a great person.”
As a senior, in what will likely be his final campaign barring an unexpected decision to return for a fifth year (the NCAA is granting all players an additional year of eligibility due to the COVID-19 pandemic), Mond has completed a career-high 63.5 percent of his passes for 2,050 yards and 19 touchdowns against just three interceptions in nine games.
He threw for 338 yards and three touchdowns in
Texas A&M’s last-second, 41-38 win over the thenNo. 4 Florida Gators. That included a 51-yard touchdown to Caleb Chapman to tie the score at 38-38 with 4:30 left on the clock and completing a 16-yard pass on third-and-8 with 50 seconds left to get the Aggies in position to kick their eventual game-winning field goal.
“He’s probably one of my favorite guys I’ve ever been involved in coaching with,” Texas A&M offensive coordinator Darrell Dickey said. “We’ve got about four or five guys around here that are also quarterback coaches, including myself, and Kellen is smarter than all of us. Him and Coach Fisher are on a different level.
“He’s been the face of the program,” Dickey continued, “as far as how we’ve improved and the direction we’re heading. And I can say this: He’s been well-coached by the head coach, by the rest of us, but he’s also spent some time off the field on his own.”
Texas A&M hasn’t lost since. They’re on a sevengame win streak heading into the Orange Bowl, a win streak that landed them as the No. 5 team in the country and just on the outside of the College Football Playoffs.
The sting of missing out on the chance to play for a national championship stung for about a day, Mond said, but the focus quickly changed to Saturday. Mond has North Carolina to focus on, not what could have been if things worked out differently. He has one game left and doesn’t want to leave with any regrets.
“We always want to have the same level of focus no matter what game we’re playing, no matter if it’s week 1 in the season or in the national championship,” Mond said. “Coach Fisher always talks about building national championship habits, and no matter what game we’re playing, I think that’s what’s important. We want to be able to do that. Whether we’re No. 5 or got left out of the playoffs or not, we want to play the best we can.”