Texas A&M’s Marco Jones still has Aggie baseball in future plans

COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) - Well before Texas A&M defensive end Marco Jones stepped under the bright lights of Kyle Field, he made his name known among the 12^th Man across the street at Blue Bell Park.

The early-enrollee freshman flashed his bat during an open intrasquad scrimmage, belting a double off the wall. The menacing stature of his 6-foot-5, 258-pound frame was the worry of pitchers weeks before he took the football field for the Aggies in spring practice.

And then, he hung up his baseball spikes in favor of football pads for the remainder of the spring.

Tuesday, Jones said he still plans to be a part of the Aggie baseball team in the future, despite focusing solely on football in his first college semester. A&M baseball head coach Michael Earley confirmed this plan with KBTX.

“When football season ends, hopefully after that national championship, then I’ll go play baseball,” Jones said. “So, I’m still planning on playing baseball.”

From the start, Jones planned to graduate early from San Ramon Valley High School in Dublin, Calif., so he could spend the spring integrating himself into the football program. The decision has paid off so far in his young career, in which he’s seen action in all eight of A&M’s games. His standout performance to date was a 3-tackle, 1-sack game against Arkansas two weeks prior.

“The sack against Arkansas was kind of a cool feeling,” Jones said of his favorite in-game moment to date. “But not me personally, I’ll probably say watching Cashius get three sacks, that was pretty cool. Can’t lie, that was pretty cool.”

In his true freshman season, Jones has tallied 83 snaps, eight total pressures on quarterbacks and four defensive stops, according to Pro Football Focus.

Giving up baseball for one season to get a head start at football wasn’t a hard decision for Jones, he said.

“I kind of knew I was going to play football first and play baseball after,” he said. “That was the whole reason I graduated high school early, was to come here and get a head start in football and really get bigger, faster, stronger and that was kind of the way that I saw it.”

The former No. 15 outfielder in the state of California, as judged by Perfect Game, said he models his baseball game after New York Yankee outfielder Aaron Judge, who also stands tall in the box at 6-foot-7. Growing up, he idolized Pittsburgh Pirate outfielder Andrew McCutchen, he said.

Now, on the football field, he has the likes of Howell, Dayon Hayes and Nana Boadi-Owusu as role models ahead of him on the Aggie depth chart, he said.

“Just trying to get better and better every day,” Jones said. “If I can learn one new thing every day, I can have a deep tool bag by when it’s really my time to go.”