Obviously, you watched the South Carolina game. I’m not going to spend a ton of time on the game itself; I’ll ramble a bit about where things are and where I think they’re headed.
Contract Situation:
Before I get into anything else, I feel the need to remind everyone of the contract situation for Texas A&M Football.
If we fire Mike Elko after this season, we owe him around $54 million. That’s in addition to the $7.27 million we have to pay Jimbo Fisher every season until 2031. That’s about $36 million left to Jimbo.
So if we fired Elko after this season, we’d owe him and Jimbo $90 million because their contracts run through 2031.
NINETY MILLION DOLLARS STILL OWED TO ELKO AND JIMBO!!!
That is just an unreal amount of money owed to two men who, other than one season each, have done nothing for Aggie Football.
Had we not extended Elko, we would owe him $15 million after this season. That’s around $50 million total, which looks like a bargain compared to $90 million. And most of that would be for Jimbo.
No one will be held accountable for any of this. We threw Ross Bjork under the bus with Jimbo, and we gave Trev Alberts the largest contract of his life when we extended Elko. Alberts is locked in with Elko because they’re both getting paid more than they ever have in their life.
Everyone involved in this situation is Teflon.
Aggie fans are just stuck with mediocre football for the foreseeable future.
My prediction is that Elko will be let go after the 2029 season, which is three more seasons. That’s right, at least three more seasons of mediocre football. Even then, we’ll still owe Elko $20 million and Jimbo $14 million. $34 million owed after the 2029 season.
Assuming Elko is let go then, that will be because he failed as well.
Unreal what we’ve gotten ourselves into with stupid contract extensions.
The Fake Field Goal:
I know I’ve been critical of Elko’s decision-making during his tenure at A&M. To me, his in-game decisions often reek of a head coach who can’t assess what’s happening in real time. He comes in with a set game plan he believes will work, and he rarely deviates unless he’s forced to.
The fake field goal on Saturday is another perfect example of his failure to assess things in real time.
In the game, South Carolina received the opening kick. They got a first down after gaining 11 yards on their first two plays. Then we pushed them back 16 yards over the next three plays, forcing them to punt—a solid showing by the defense to open the game.
Rueben Owens rips off a 40-yard run on our first offensive play. We then gain three yards on the next three plays, setting up a fourth-and-seven at the South Carolina 30-yard line. That’s about a 47-yard field goal for Olano, who seems to have minimal issues making a kick like that.
Elko decides to run a fake field goal on a pitch to Olano. Olano only gets three yards.
After the game, this is what Elko had to say about the attempt:
“I thought we had the look. I think the film will show we had exactly what we wanted. I thought we blocked it exactly how we wanted. Unfortunately, we didn’t run it the way we needed to. … They didn’t have enough people over there.”
His quote is a little contradictory because he says they blocked it exactly how they wanted, but then blames the run and says they didn’t have enough people over there. Not sure who “they” is in the last part, but there was hat on hat for both sides. Neither side held a numbers advantage.
Here’s a link to the play on YouTube:
Based on that film, I don’t see an obvious advantage for A&M. Sure, Olano slipped and could have run a little harder, but I don’t see how he gained four more yards. It’s not like he slipped in open field. He’s a kicker, and he slipped because South Carolina had one defender making contact and another about to make contact as well. He was going to get tackled short of the needed seven yards.
Here’s a photo of the blocking assignments, and it’s man-on-man with no numbers advantage. We would have to execute it perfectly for it to work. How often have we had a seven-yard run with a running back this season when we needed it most?
And Elko is trying it with his kicker.
Elko reacts to the play with his palms up like he’s shocked it didn’t work. It wasn’t there, Mike. South Carolina had it defended the whole time.
Have you seen this team block much this season, Mike? Our kicker was not going to rush for seven yards there.
My biggest issue, beyond the play design not being there, is Elko calling for the play at all.
THERE IS ZERO REASON TO CALL A FAKE FIELD GOAL ON 4TH AND 7 ON YOUR OPENING DRIVE WHEN YOUR KICKER IS YOUR BEST OFFENSIVE WEAPON AND HAS BEEN ALL SEASON!!!!
Take the points and keep that fake in your pocket in case you need it later.
Elko’s decision reeks of a head coach who was convinced that play was there before the game and couldn’t deviate. He didn’t look at the distance. He was always going for it because he somehow got convinced during the week of practice that it would work.
Based on his reaction, I’m not sure he fully followed the play. He just expected it to work and was surprised it didn’t because it worked all week in practice against the scout team.
A smart head coach keeps that play in his pocket and checks alignment on at least one actual field-goal attempt, especially when you need seven yards and perfect blocking. Take the dang points on the road and give yourself some cushion.
There was no numbers advantage there. It was hat on hat.
As I process Elko’s reasoning and review the play, it just doesn’t reconcile. His explanation doesn’t match what was actually there. The film doesn’t support what he says, which means he’s not assessing reality in his coaching decisions.
It goes back to the many fourth-down decisions Elko has made where he has no real feeling for whether his team can convert what’s needed.
He sets his beliefs in practice and can’t assess in real time whether they’ll work.
But I might be one of those guys who doesn’t know the ball he talks about.
Offensive Issues:
I’m sure most of you have seen the stat where South Carolina became our third SEC game this year where we didn’t score a touchdown. Those games have been LSU, Missouri, and South Carolina.
All on the road.
We scored two against Alabama and three against Kentucky. So in five non-Arkansas SEC games, we have five touchdowns total.
I’m sure you’ve also seen the stat where Texas A&M is the first team in college history to compile over 450 yards of offense with no turnovers and not score a touchdown. That’s not the kind of history you want to be making.
That stat happened for three reasons that have occurred time and time again this season:
1) No explosive players – Mario Craver is the only real explosive player on this offense. He’s been hurt a good part of the season, and we don’t seem to know how to utilize him. We don’t have a running back with breakaway speed. Owens had two runs he could have taken to the house, but he doesn’t have “getting-away-from-the-cops” speed, as Gus Johnson would say. KJ Edwards is explosive on his initial steps, but I haven’t seen him rip off a long run this season.
We have one offensive play over 50 yards this whole season. It was Kiotti Armstrong’s catch-and-run against Arkansas. That’s the play where the linebacker covering Armstrong fell, and the safety wanted no part of tackling Armstrong.
That’s the only play we have over 50 yards this season, including games against Missouri State and The Citadel. A tight end on a busted play by the defense is the only play over 50 yards in nine games. Including the powder puff teams.
If I’m a defensive coordinator, I’m not worried about big plays by this offense.
2) No red zone ability – Want to know how many rushing touchdowns we have by running backs in our five SEC losses? One. Carsyn Baker with a two-yard rush against Kentucky.
We have three total rushing touchdowns in those five losses, with Marcel scoring two.
Want to know how many receptions in those five losses? Two. A five-yard pass to Micah Riley against Kentucky and a nine-yard pass to Mario Craver against Alabama. Ironically, that’s Mario Craver’s only touchdown against an SEC opponent in his time at A&M.
We have five touchdowns in five SEC games when Arkansas wasn’t involved. Obviously, that’s a massive reason we have five losses, but it helps illustrate how putrid this offense is at scoring touchdowns.
For reference, we had four rushing touchdowns and no passing touchdowns against Arkansas, so we basically doubled our touchdowns in SEC games thanks to Arkansas. That Arkansas game is an outlier for SEC opponents.
The reality is we don’t have a red zone threat, not at running back and not at receiver.
If I’m a defensive coordinator playing this offense, I’m going to run a bend-but-don’t-break defense. You’d be foolish not to. Sure, I want to get off the field, but I don’t need to gamble with lots of pressure or crazy coverages my guys can’t handle.
A base-level defense with lots of zone, with a single safety back while disguising where pressure is coming from, will do the trick.
Once A&M is in the red zone, clog every passing lane and make sure you handle gap integrity against the run.
That’s seriously all it takes to defend this offense from scoring touchdowns.
Which is what makes Elko’s decision on the fake field goal even more maddening. We didn’t walk into Columbia with an offense that’s been lighting it up in the red zone.
Take the dang points, Mike.
3) Penalties stall drives – On our first drive of the second half, we drove down to the South Carolina 31 thanks to Reuben Owens’ 44-yard run. Once again, if Owens had a higher gear, it likely would’ve been a touchdown. He doesn’t have it, but he had two great runs on the first play of each half totaling 88 yards.
On the next play, KJ Edwards rushes for three yards to the South Carolina 28, but Kiotti Armstrong gets an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. He blocked a defender, then stood over him taunting him. It was a clear penalty.
I didn’t see any coaches really yell at Armstrong for being selfish and hurting his team. He just went off to the sideline like no big deal.
That pushed us back to the South Carolina 43 and gave us second down and 22. Reed would make a nice 16-yard completion to Horton on the second-down play. Reed then missed Craver on a pass to the end zone on 3rd and 6 from the South Carolina 26. Not sure why we were going for the end zone on that play, but nothing surprises me with this offense.
I feel like Wiggins calls plays like he’s playing Madden. He’s just randomly selecting plays, hoping they’ll work.
Either way, Armstrong’s personal foul put us in a bind despite a great opening run by Owens. A personal foul helped stall out the offense.
On our second possession of the second half, we drove down to the South Carolina seven-yard line. On 1st and Goal at the seven, Marcel throws the perfect ball to Isiah Horton, but he can’t complete it because the defender is holding one of his arms.
When asked in his post-game conference if Horton was interfered with, Elko said, “Hard to say.” He was ABSOLUTELY interfered with on that play. The defender was holding one of his arms. I was wondering why Elko wasn’t going ballistic on a referee. Apparently he didn’t see it, or nobody on his staff called it out to him.
Again, what does Elko watch during the game?
On the next play, we false-started. On the next play, we false-started again. We went from 2nd and Goal at the seven to 2nd and Goal from the 17. We then had an incompletion on 2nd down and a 4-yard rush on 3rd down.
Then, to make matters worse, Olano missed the 30-yard field goal. He might have made it, but the goalposts weren’t high enough. Seriously. It looked like it went right over the goalpost, so the referee had to make a judgment call.
There’s a slight question on the third-down run, as KJ Edwards ran to the right side, which set up the kick from the right hash. Olano missed on the right side.
I’m curious whether Elko has discussed where Olano likes to kick from at certain distances. Elko was clearly playing for the field goal with a rush on 3rd and Goal from the 17. The play should have been run to wherever Olano wants to kick from at that distance.
It’s entirely possible Olano likes kicking from the right hash, so my question may not be warranted. However, if Elko doesn’t know where his kicker prefers to kick from at certain distances, that missed field goal could be on Elko.
Maybe the run should have centered it up for Olano.
Back to the penalties, this whole season it feels like several drives have been stalled out due to penalties. Either false starts or holds by the offensive line seem to stall out drives routinely.
If I got paid for this, I might look it up. Since I don’t, you’ll have to take my word for it.
Mike Elko claims to preach discipline and smart football. The results say otherwise, as we had eight penalties for 75 yards in that game. Not going to say penalties cost us the game, but they sure didn’t help.
Marcel Reed played his best game, according to Elko – After the game, Elko had this to say about Marcel Reed’s performance:
“Yeah, I thought he played well. I thought he delivered the ball the way we wanted to. Again, maybe down the stretch, a little bit more poise, but he also put a lot of balls in really good places down the stretch. I thought some of those we should have been able to come down with. Again, I thought that was his best game of the year. I thought we operated in the throw game, for the most part, better than we have most of the year. I think we left a lot out there on the table.”
To be fair to Reed, Elko is right. This was Reed’s best passing game this season. Reed had 25 completions in 43 attempts with no interceptions. That’s a 58% passer. That’s decent.
I saw there were eight official drops by the receivers, so if they catch those balls, he’s a 77% passer, which is really good.
The problem with Elko’s comment is that he’s comparing Reed to some REALLY bad games and, to make matters worse, we didn’t score any touchdowns, AND we lost the game.
Reed’s last two passes were pretty bad, but he played a decent game overall based on his passing numbers. It just didn’t result in anything meaningful on the scoreboard.
It’s totally confusing to hear Elko call it his best game and then have a completely futile offense when it comes to scoring. I can’t reconcile it.
I tend to think it’s a coaching and play-calling issue, but I know Reed can be total garbage as well.
I think much of it comes down to having no real playmakers on offense, and Wiggins is still learning on the job.
And both of those things go back to decisions made by Mike Elko.
Defensive Effort:
It’s hard to fault the defense for this loss. They limited South Carolina for much of the game. The Aggie defense created a key fumble that took away at minimum a field goal attempt for South Carolina. They held South Carolina to 4/12 on third-down conversions. Kept them to 25 minutes of possession.
They gave up 360 yards, which is a little more than I’d like, but this South Carolina offense put up 520 yards on OU the week before. This is a good South Carolina offense, and I thought they would do more against our defense.
I give our defense massive props for holding the South Carolina offense in check most of the game.
The problem with this defense is it’s going to bust on a couple of drives.
On South Carolina’s third possession, they went on an eight-play, 75-yard drive. The touchdown came on an absolute brain fart where the defense didn’t recognize South Carolina had a trips formation with one Aggie defending.
The photo below is the first touchdown right at the snap. You can see what a numbers mismatch actually looks like.
For the second touchdown, our linebackers got sucked up inside and let LaNorris Sellers have a lane, and he torched the defense for a 41-yard touchdown.
I’m not faulting the defense for the loss. They played well enough to win.
It just shows they’re not perfect, and the offense has to pick up the slack.
Recruiting Issues:
The biggest issue from this game is that one of our best recruits switched from Texas A&M to Georgia. He was the top-rated tackle in the country out of Florida.
It may prove to be a slight blessing because we’ll need to free up NIL money for the portal if Elko has any chance of righting this ship.
We had another commit at the Notre Dame/Miami game, and it seems inevitable he’ll flip from the Aggies to the Irish.
We also have other top recruits wavering, so that vaunted number one high school recruiting class is about to fall apart. We should hopefully still land a Top 10 high school class, which should give us a decent core for the program going forward.
I don’t like it, but I do think it could be a blessing. It might wake Elko up to focus on the transfer portal for next season rather than playing some long game with high school recruiting. Immediately righting the ship is the only thing that’s going to save him long term. He doesn’t have time anymore to develop high school guys.
Micro vs Macro View:
What upsets me most right now is how irrelevant Aggie Football is. On a Saturday with crazy matchups all over the place, the Aggies weren’t even thought about.
We were playing a Top 25 team, and no one outside of Aggie and Gamecock fans cared.
So much so that ESPN put our game on at 2:00 pm so our first quarter was on ESPNews if you didn’t have the ESPN app. If you were at a bar that wasn’t dedicated to Aggie games, you probably weren’t watching the first quarter.
ESPN did it so they could air the full games of Tennessee against Kentucky and then Texas Tech against West Virginia.
It’s happening again this weekend, with another 2:00 pm start.
Much of the country won’t be able to watch the first quarter of our game easily. ESPN is airing SMU and Wake Forest until it’s clear who’s going to win. I’ll be at Kyle, so it doesn’t matter to me, but it’s frustrating to know we’re a team ESPN is willing to sacrifice part of our game for, even if it’s a Top 25 opponent.
We keep clawing and fighting for national relevancy, but we never back it up. After setting up the possibility last season, Mike Elko went and did his best Rodney Dangerfield impersonation with the 2026 Aggie Football team.
Will Elko Fix This?:
I lean toward he won’t because he has a certain style of football he wants to play. He has a certain way he wants to build his program with internal hires, not overpaying in the transfer portal, and building through high school players.
It’s what Kirby Smart is doing, but Mike Elko ain’t Kirby Smart. Mike Elko is a TEMU Kirby Smart at best.
His press conferences show that Elko is completely lost on why and how he got here. Everyone else can see he screwed up hiring the offensive staff and mis-evaluated many of the players on his roster.
Everyone can see it but him.
I think what’s going to have to happen is the folks with the money and connections have to stop being his friends. Put him on an island. I know he’s not satisfied with where we are, but if the money people keep being chummy with him, then he has no real chance of changing.
Sure, he’ll make some changes, but he won’t make the uncomfortable changes he needs to make unless he’s really pressed. Elko needs to hire elite-level coaches who challenge him, not just people who are grateful to have a job at a big-time football program.
Well, a college football program with lots of resources. As ESPN’s cutting out 25% of our games shows, we’re not currently a big-time college football program.
There’s always a chance Elko could shut down as Jimbo did, but Elko is young enough, and I believe hungry enough, to make the right changes.
Elko has made most of the Aggie fanbase who doesn’t have access to him uncomfortable with how they feel about Aggie Football. It’s time for those with access to Elko to make him uncomfortable. If there’s any hope of turning Aggie Football into a respectable program in the near future, people with money and access need to press Elko to be different.
This Rodney Dangerfield act ain’t gonna cut it.
BTHO Tennessee
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