Dear Donovan,

Last season was supposed to be your big final farewell to the Aggies and to college football. A senior defensive captain, you had grown into the role with three previous seasons of outstanding play and leadership.

You put in the hard work and dedicated yourself to be the best that you could be for the first three years in College Station. From the time you stepped on campus, playing in 10 games as a freshman while recording 17 solo tackles, 3 for losses, you have maintained a constant level excellence.

But a foot injury in the first game of the 2017 season against UCLA and subsequent surgery left you on the sidelines and your future in doubt. You could have seen this as some sort of sign and therefore foregone any further college eligibility.

You could have tested the waters for a professional career and nobody could have blamed you. The reputation you built over the first three years surely had long since turned heads of NFL GMs.

You didn’t do that. You chose to finish what you had started at Texas A&M. You chose to come back and prove that one more year would finish an illustrious career and make you a household name among college football fans. There is perhaps no one more deserving of a medical redshirt than Donovan Wilson.

Now you are tasked with taking advantage of it. Now you must execute the plan. Fully healed from your injury, we already know, based on past performance, that you’ll put in the effort to make that happen.

Here’s hoping that you return to the ball hawking form that had you leading the team in interceptions, with 5, in your sophomore year of 2015.

You have a new defensive coordinator in Mike Elko, and things might seem a little different; who knows, maybe your tackle numbers will increase from your career high of 63 during that sensational sophomore season, which included that electrifying 60-yard pick-six against South Carolina. But either way, the game is still the same. It hasn’t changed.

Sure responsibilities are greater as a senior leader, but you got a taste of that last year and you’ve proven that you can handle it. And that’s what it’s going to take to advance the program to where it ultimately wants to be.

In fact, you just might be standing on the threshold of what has the potential to be the greatest era in Aggies football. With the arrival of Jimbo Fisher, visions of national prominence are dancing in the heads of those who call Aggieland home as you have for the last four years in your journey from across the border from Shreveport, La.

That’s where, despite leading the area with 13 interceptions as a senior and being named a Class 4A All-State player by your local newspaper in Louisiana, you were underrated as a 3-star athlete and didn’t quite get the recognition you deserved from college recruiters. Not even after showing your versatility by catching 57 passes for 860 yards and 9 touchdowns as a wide receiver.

But you chose Texas A&M over TCU and Utah, among others, to display your talents at the collegiate level, and you chose wisely. With the Aggies you have blossomed from your very first start, a team-leading nine tackles in the Liberty Bowl vs. West Virginia, and now you stand on the doorstep of greatness in the greatest football conference in America.

You’ve been given the gift of one more season as an Aggie, one more year to do what you set out to do last year, one more chance to show college football that you define the position of strong safety. It’s one last hurrah, make it your best yet.

Gig ‘Em