Elko ready to see what his Aggies do in SEC opener

After their dramatic 41-40 win at Notre Dame, Texas A&M and coach Mike Elko had a bye week to recalibrate. As far as Elko was concerned, it was a good time for the 3-0 Aggies to have a break.

“We had a productive bye week. I thought we were able to get a lot of things accomplished last week, just kind of focusing in on ourselves, areas where we can improve, areas where we could get better,” he said.

The win over Notre Dame was not only a win over a top-10 team on the road, it helped the Aggies shake off the bad memories of last year’s late season collapse that included blowing late leads to Auburn and to USC in the Las Vegas Bowl.

“Obviously that was a huge step for our program (to get the win). I think that’s the biggest thing…when you get in those moments, you’ve got to ultimately find a way to get the job done in order to move the program forward,” Elko said. “We had an opportunity to do that at Auburn last year. We had an opportunity to do that in the bowl game last year. And we weren’t able to finish it the right way. It was good to get into a game and finish it.”

One of the areas that the A&M defense focused on was run defense, as the Aggies continue their frustrating habit of shutting down the run for several plays, then being gashed for a big gain due to missed tackles or blown assignments. A clear source of irritation, Elko said the coaching staff spent a significant amount of time working on the problem.

“I think just continuing to the best of our ability to point things out in hopes that, at some point, you click with a little bit higher level of consistency of performance,” he said. “Obviously, if I had a better answer we would have solved it already. And that’s not an excuse. It’s just a reality. But yeah, still extremely diligent at it, still working hard at it, still trying to find creative ways to get it — what with how we teach, how we call things, what we call, what we do, what they’re comfortable doing — and just still trying to find that that recipe to get that right.”

The defense will be looking across at an offensive line that gave up nine sacks and only averaged 1.9 yards per carry in a 24-17 loss to Oklahoma last weekend. Elko said his defenders had been warned against any complacency based on last week’s results.

“I think they’re extremely talented up front. I think it was a little bit of an anomaly on Saturday,” he said. “We’ve got a ton of respect for them. I said this to the guys this morning. Human psychology says absolutely, without a doubt, the best unit on the field Saturday will be the Auburn offensive line. I can promise you that.”

Quarterback Jackson Arnold, who took the brunt of those nine sacks, has been effective when given time to throw. He’s completed nearly 70% of his passes and has not thrown an interception since week 5 of 2024 — when he was wearing an Oklahoma uniform.

“(Arnold is) a really talented kid. I think he can make a lot of throws. He’s got really good arm talent. He’s got the ability to beat you with his legs and can run around and do some things,” Elko said. “I’m sure he’s going to be very hungry to come out and play really, really well Saturday.”

Even though Auburn ranks 105th in the nation in passing yardage, they have the ability to break out at any time thanks to star receivers Cam Coleman and Eric Singleton. Elko said his team is very aware of Auburn’s talent at wideout.

“I’d way rather be playing guys who weren’t big, athletic, fast, and 10.2 in the 100 meters,” he said. “This is a really, really talented wide receiver corps. We’ll see how we do on Saturday. But there’s a lot of other teams I would rather try to match up with on Saturday at wide receiver than this group.”

Elko said his team now has the challenge of putting the win over Notre Dame in the rearview mirror and has to look ahead to prevent an embarrassing slip up — something that has happened all too often in recent A&M history.

“The challenge to our guys is to handle the psychology of success and to continue to stay grounded, to continue to keep working, continue to move forward and continue to focus on the things we’ve got to focus on to become the best team we’re capable of becoming,” he said. “Three weeks does not make a finish. We’ve still got a lot of football left and a lot of things that we’ve got to do in order to accomplish what we want to accomplish. We have zero SEC wins right now. We’ve got a lot of things we’ve got to do still.”