Elko not taking South Carolina lightly

Texas A&M is currently a 19.5-point favorite over 3-6 South Carolina in their matchup this Saturday. But when it comes to motivation, coach Mike Elko says the Aggies shouldn’t need any.

“Regardless of what their record is, (they’re) a really, really talented football team on Saturday and it’s the same team that beat us by 25 points or whatever it was last year and really embarrassed us up and down the field,” he said. “So if any of our players or anyone thinks it’s going to be anything different than that, they’re kind of crazy.”

The Aggies went to Columbia, S.C. last year confident, with a 7-1 record and a drubbing of LSU in their back pocket. The Gamecocks responded by curb stomping Texas A&M 44-20, starting a late season spiral that saw the Aggies lose four of their final five games.

This year, South Carolina comes into Kyle Field with a 3-6 record and an offense that is among the worst in the nation in nearly every statistical category. Elko said he wasn’t taking the Gamecocks’ record, or their offensive struggles, as true indicators of how talented a team they are.

“This will be their fifth straight game against a team ranked in the top 12 or higher. I can’t imagine that that has happened very often throughout the history of college football. I don’t know what they did to the scheduling gods to get the schedule that they’ve gotten,” he said. “In my opinion, a team that is extremely talented, much better than their record would indicate, coming off of a bye week and obviously with a lot of confidence based on what they did to us last year.”

The primary culprit from last year’s blowout returns: quarterback LaNorris Sellers. Sellers threw for 244 yards and 2 touchdowns while running for 106 yards and another score as Texas A&M put on a clinic in how not to tackle. Even though Sellers hasn’t had the same success this year, Elko says he’s still extremely dangerous.

“I see the same big, physical, athletic kid that ran all over us and threw all over us last year,” he said. “So I see the same kid, and so our kids better see the same kid because he absolutely lit us up last year. If we want to have any level of success on Saturday, we will do a much better job of understanding what the challenge actually is this year.”

South Carolina ran for 286 yards against the Texas A&M last year, but this year has been different. The Gamecocks are averaging just 2.8 yards per carry and have not rushed for 200 yards in any game so far this season. South Carolina has rushed for a total of 907 yards this season, or less than Rueben Owens and Le’Veon Moss combined.

Elko couldn’t care less, as he took his defense to task over their continued mistakes in rush defense.

“Our job on defense is get the job done consistently, start to finish, and we’re not doing that at the level we need to stop the run right now,” he said. “There’s other things that go into it. We’re not going to completely sell out to do it. We’re not going to completely take away our pass rush to do it. Because all of it counts, right? At the end of the day, the most important thing is total yards and points. But if you just look specifically at the run defense, there are certainly areas we can improve.”

Texas A&M gets an additional challenge Saturday, as coach Shane Beamer and the Gamecocks will be breaking in a new offensive coordinator, Mike Furrey. Furrey took over during South Carolina’s bye week after Beamer fired Mike Shula.

“It’s really challenging. It’s really a blank slate that they’ve had a week to look at our defense, a week to formulate a plan based off everything they’ve learned about our defense. You would assume that they’re going to have a really, really strong plan coming into the game,” Elko said. “You don’t imagine they can change too much, because obviously it’s a little bit like we talked about with Missouri with a new quarterback. Eleven kids have been running a certain system, so they’re certainly not going to completely change the entire system. But wrinkles, tweaks, different things, motions, formations, stress points, you can change a lot in two weeks.”

The matchup with the Gamecocks will be the first time Texas A&M has played at home in a month. After a three-game road trip that saw them score 132 points, the Aggies return to Kyle Field with a 9-0 record and the No. 3 ranking in the College Football Playoff rankings.

“Would anyone honestly look me in the eye and tell me you thought we would do that at the beginning of the year? I am not sure that I would have looked in the mirror and said I thought we could either,” Elko said. “You have to learn how to do those things and this program hasn’t really done that recently. I think it’s a testament to the kids. They formed a lot of confidence when we went into South Bend and got that one done. And I think they believe in what they’re capable of. But for them to still go out there and do it three straight weeks, it’s extremely impressive.”

During the road trip, quarterback Marcel Reed accounted for eight touchdowns while only turning the ball over twice. The last touchdown was a 48-yard catch and run by KC Concepcion on a play Reed audibled into at the line of scrimmage. That play, Elko said, highlighted Reed’s development as a quarterback.

“He’s made a lot of growth. When we talked in the offseason about him learning what it takes to be an SEC quarterback, all of that stuff goes into it,” Elko said. “The first thing that happens when a really talented player gets on campus is he relies on his talent. Then somewhere along the line, he realizes whoa, okay, now I kind of understand why you were talking about all those things. Why pre-snap reads matter. Why getting us in the right play matters.”

Even though Elko’s disdain for discussing last season has become legendary, he said the team has learned from last year’s loss in Columbia and the tailspin that followed.

“I just think last year was such a learning lesson for us. Nobody appreciated–because, like me, everyone was so disappointed with how the year ended–but I don’t think anyone appreciated the challenge that was being in that position really for the first time for those kids ever, and for the program, we hadn’t been in that position very much either,” Elko said. “I think we just learned a lot. We learned a lot about what would come with it, how to handle it all, what it all really meant at the end of the day.

Again, we’ve handled it the right way for nine games. There’s still three more that we’ve got to handle one at a time. That starts Saturday.”