Terry Bussey Was the Right Returner—and the Worst Player Texas A&M Could Lose

Terry Bussey suffered a season-ending lower-body injury while returning the opening kickoff against Kentucky. That instantly invites the most predictable argument in football: why expose an important receiver on special teams?

Because Bussey was not moonlighting as a returner. Returning was part of what made him important.

Texas A&M did not misuse him by putting the ball in his hands in space. The Aggies lost him doing the job that best captured his value—and that is precisely why this injury is so difficult to absorb.

One player covered three roster needs

Bussey had seven catches for 92 yards this season, including four for 58 against Arizona State. His official Texas A&M bio lists 1,251 career all-purpose yards: 411 receiving, 103 rushing, 638 on kick returns and 99 on punts.

That is not gadget production. It is roster flexibility. Bussey could stretch a defense, take a designed carry and improve field position without forcing the Aggies to dedicate three separate lineup spots to those jobs.

Now the offense loses a receiver just as Ashton Bethel-Roman has also been unavailable, while the return units lose their most proven open-field option. The injury does not subtract 92 receiving yards. It breaks several contingency plans at once.

The counterargument is that star-level offensive players should be protected from high-speed special-teams collisions. I understand it. But hiding Bussey from returns would have reduced the advantage Texas A&M recruited him to create. Football cannot eliminate risk by removing valuable players from valuable snaps.

Reuters confirmed Bussey will miss the rest of the season after he had been named the Aggies’ offensive player of the week for the Arizona State game.

My verdict: the kickoff assignment was defensible. The real failure would be asking one replacement to mimic everything Bussey did. Texas A&M should split the receiving, rushing and return responsibilities now, because his rare value came from combining them—not from being merely a wideout who happened to return kicks.