Everything Mike Elko said following comeback win over South Carolina

Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko after coming back from down 30-3 at halftime to South Carolina.

Here’s everything he said.

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Opening Statement

“Don’t really know where else to start. You know, credit to our guys, credit for how they stuck to it, credit with how they rallied, credit with how they came together. Thought they did a really, really good job of staying positive and keep fighting to the next play. And then for them to go out in the second half and do what they did. That’s championship-level football. And obviously, the first half, we didn’t do anything right, but at the end of the day, we came out and we did what we had to do to win a football game.”

What did you say at halftime?

“Yeah, honestly, not much. Like, all we talked about was we have an identity of who we are. If we play to our identity, we’re a good football team. If we start thinking that’s not who we are. If we start thinking we’re something else, if we start trying to play a different way, that’s not us, that’s not who we are. And we’re a blue-collar team, we’re a physical team, we’re a team that has to control the line of scrimmage, we’re a team that has to play with a lot of energy, and we just weren’t doing any of those things in the first half.”

“And I think the vibes were good, all things considered. The vibes were good. The kids believed we were going to come out and win that game in the second half, whether they really did or not. That was the energy in the locker room. And then obviously we made some plays early in the second half to get the momentum going, to get the crowd going, and from that point, it just kind of spiraled in our favor.”

Did you feel like you guys had to play a near-perfect second half to win that game? And besides, the fumble at the one-yard line, did you feel like you guys did that for the most part?

“Yeah. I mean, we still weren’t perfect. We still, you know, there’s still a lot of things we could have fixed, but yeah, for sure, felt like we had to play near perfect. You know, down four scores at halftime. I think I read somewhere that SEC teams are 0-286 all-time in that predicament. So that’s 1-286 now, I guess. But yeah, I mean, we didn’t have a lot of margin. We were gonna have to score, we’d have to get stops, we’re gonna have to keep score. And again, we were able to do that.”

What adjustments did you make defensively to shut them down in the second half?

“First of all, I didn’t tweet anything. That was important. The second thing is, I think we kind of got into some better feel for how they were running things. They did some things a little differently. I thought that was critical and important. I thought that helped.”

Any theories or thoughts on the slow start?

“Yeah, I think, obviously, we talk about this a lot. If you take your foot off the gas and football, football will humble you. Quick. Clearly, we weren’t in the mental space we needed to be in to start that game. That’s on me. I’m the head football coach. We weren’t doing the things on either side of the ball that we needed to do to be successful. That’s on me. I’m the head coach, and, yeah, this game always finds a way to humble you if you don’t do it the way it’s supposed to be done. And clearly, we didn’t do it the way it was supposed to be done. To start that game.”

You talked about the growth of Marcel Reed. What was the conversation with him at halftime?

“Yeah, just told him to relax like it wasn’t, you know. Again, he’s the quarterback, and so all of the positives and negatives always fall on him. Offense is so much about rhythm, you know. And he makes a bad throw.”

“We give up a pressure. Someone drops a ball, he makes a big it just was kind of that that was the rhythm we were in in the first half, and it was so choppy and, you know, and so we were able to get back into halftime, just settle him down.”

“I thought the tempo helped a lot. I think us going tempo to start the second half took some of the thinking out of his brain, and just kind of got him loose and free and playing that certainly helped get him into a better rhythm. I think they didn’t handle it particularly well. And so we were able to get some more easy access throws, which was important. And I just think again, he got rolling and got going.”

What can you say about Izaiah Williams turning his first catch into a touchdown?

“Yeah, it’s another story, right? Another story of a kid in this program who works hard every day to get ready when his number is going to be called, and you never know, and all of a sudden Mario’s (Craver) down, and we need some guys to step up. And, you know, here comes Isaiah, and he’s a talented player. He hasn’t been able to get a ton of opportunities this year because there’s other talented players in front of him, but to his credit, he just kept working, talked to him out of the locker room after the game, and just proud of him for continuing to be ready and be in the position needed to be to be successful.

Fourth and 12, third quarter, talk about going for it and how it changed the trajectory of the game.

“Yeah. I mean, obviously we were playing to win, so we’re not playing for any other reason. And at that point there was still a chance for us to win, and so we were going to play to win. Going to play to win, and punting is not helping us at that point.”

“And so we actually tried on the second and third down to get some shorter yards to get the thing going, and it just didn’t work out the way we wanted it to. And so, but that was yeah, we just felt like it was the right thing to do at that”

I know you try to script out things, is this something you’ve done in practice being down and having to pass as much as this to get back in the game?

“Yeah, a lot less. When we work on this situation, we call it we call it six minute offense. And so it’s like, that’s that thought of like being down two scores or three scores with seven, eight minutes to go in the game, where you got to pick your tempo up. You know, you can still run your offense, but you got to be able to pick your tempo up, and you got to be able to go there’s a conditioning element to it.”

“There’s obviously a communication element to it. You don’t have the ability to just sit around and take as much time as you want to, and so I’ve never had to do that to start a second half before, but, yeah, it is a, certainly, a situation that we spend time on again. We just have to start it a lot earlier than I’ve ever had to do before.”

When you have a program like that, how? How much is it can a quarterback get comfortable when they’ve gone through something like that before, done in practice?

“Yeah, I mean, obviously it helps, you know, and the more situational football you play, the better it is, I think, probably even more so the way we went out and got the stop at the end, that’s another time that we’ve gone out with the game, on the line, on defense, and got a stop at the end. And that’s another practice of that situation, a lot more than the first one.”

“But yeah, when you put kids in those situations, you do it so that they’re comfortable and they don’t panic. And so certainly a lot of the things that we were calling maybe weren’t part of the base thoughts in our game plan this week, but they are certainly things we repped a lot, practiced a lot. We practice them every week. And so we were able to get in them when we needed them and rolled.

What was the play call on the final fumble?

“It was a disaster. It’s my fault.”

Once again most attended game this season. What is the message to the 12th man?

“Yeah, thank you for staying with us. Sorry for what the first half looked like, but in a lot of ways, you propelled us to victory in the second. There’s not a lot of places where that stadium is going to look like it looked when we come back out after halftime. And so I noticed it obviously in the fourth quarter, when the crowd was really going, but then just standing there at the end, sawing them off, and just seeing how full the stadium still was, was an impressive showing by the 12th man, once again.”

Coach, when you picked up Nate Boerkircher in the portal, did you envision he had this kind of impact

“Yeah, you know, obviously, when you go get guys, you think that they’re good players. We had a lot of, a lot of belief in who Nate was. It was, again, it’s kind of our process of evaluating tape and watching them play. And there were some other kids in the portal that obviously we felt like he was a much better player than. So we went after him really hard. We thought he was going to be able to give us a little bit of both. He obviously is a more physical kid than he is a, you know, a wide open wide receiver, pass catching tight, but we knew he had really good hands. We knew he could play tight end and run routes and catch the ball. And so he gives us a lot. He gives us a lot of value.”

You were visibly more emotional after this one, especially with Marcel, just watching you celebrate with him. You know, beyond the numbers, the stats, having the measured quarterback made 439 yards today, but just what does that mean to watch him be able to go out there and do what he did?

“Yeah, I’m not lost for words very much, but I was lost for words with the team in the locker room after the game. A lot of that emotion was just pride in who they were, how they conducted themselves, you know, there’s, again, there’s not a lot of teams that have a culture and a core that will just keep going, you know.”

“And again, like, we just, like, even the 80-yard pass before, it just was one after another after another in the first half. And like, could not blank and really go into the locker room and still come out in the second half and compete, and then ultimately to score 28 straight points and win a football game that ends with a 99-yard drive, like, yeah, there’s just not a lot of words for that. Was really impressive.”

You talked about that same happy championship-level football. What kind of level of football Do you see from Cashius Howell, especially there at the end, where it seemed like he made the plays when it mattered the most?

“Yeah, I think I’d be lying. I could tell you who was making the plays at the end. I’m assuming he was in and around the pile. I take your word for it. Some of that was a blur a little bit, just trying to get us into the right call. But he’s a talented player, you know, and when they got into a situation where they had to throw the ball a little bit more, we were able to kind of get going a little bit with the pass rush.”

“It was such a run-heavy game plan by then, and we knew it would be, and so we weren’t really able to do much from the pass rush standpoint early on, but as the game got open, we got to lead at the end. We’re able to kind of turn it loose a little bit. And I think he was able to do the things he’s capable of.”

I’m sure, tell your team to look ahead and not behind if things didn’t go well. But what does it say about Reed that he had a tough first half, and he not only didn’t look back, but he had one of the most epic performances in the second half ever to keep your team on track to where you want to be?

“Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s what winners do, like, I think that’s, that’s what winners do, is, is they control, whether they’re capable of controlling, right? And you have to have confidence in yourself. You have to have put in a lot of work. You have to have confidence in the people around you. And I think all of that came out today. He’s a confident kid. It certainly wasn’t lost on him. Wasn’t playing very well. But you know, we believe in him, the team believes in him. He believes in us, he believes in the team. And when all of that stuff is there, the only thing you can do is just make the next throw, right? That’s literally all you can do. And so he did it. I think we were able to calm down a little bit. Like, I think one of the things that happened in the first half, for sure, is, like, we just started really pressing. Like, it just was we were in panic mode trying to do too much to make the play. So, like, it just we had in the panic mode. And I do think, like, at least at halftime, it was like, okay, like, can we just, like, take a breath and start playing football a little bit. And so that helped, for sure.”

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What was the feeling on the sideline entering halftime? Was there anybody that stepped up and maybe rallied the troops in the locker room at halftime. And what do you think the kind of emotions were after that sequence?

“It sounds crazy to say this, but there really wasn’t a lot of panic. There were certainly your leaders. You know, you heard Taurean York you heard him as you heard Ar’maj Reed-Adams. You heard Marcel Reed like you heard (KC) Concepcion like you heard our leaders talking as we were going up the tunnel as we’re going into the locker room. I think we made sure that we reset the energy the right way.”

“I thought that was important, just to make sure that everybody knew kind of where we needed to be and what space we needed to be in. And yeah, as bad as everything was going, just we don’t panic. Like that’s the one thing we don’t do, is we don’t panic. And maybe we need to panic a little bit more, I don’t know, but it worked for us today.”

Any status update on Rueben Owens?

“No, I think he came back in. I think he came back in at some point. If he didn’t, it’s not a massive thing.”

Hey, Coach. How do you soak in a game like this right after a game? Have you ever coached it or played in a game like this in recent memory that’s been this crazy?

“That’s the first for me in my career. I don’t even really know what just happened, to be honest with you, a whole lot of heart left on the field and whole lot of support from a great group of fans.”

From what you could see in real time, what would you feel like maybe led to the turnovers Marcel had in the first half, and what you feel like you did on the field that helped clean up his play there in that second half?

“Yeah, honestly, the first half is, I’ll come back to that on Monday, like that was a little bit of a blur at this point. I couldn’t even tell you that I remember him at this point. Certainly, the one was a really bad play call by us, really harms way with the end charging in his face. The touchdown, yeah, I don’t even remember the rest of them.”

“I think again, I think the rhythm, the tempo, creating some easy access throws. I think we’re able to slow the pass rush down through the tempo. That helped. Obviously, they’re really talented up front, and they look like a team that was, you know, fresh off a bye (week) and fired up to come in here and beat a team that was ranked really high. We didn’t match their energy at all in the first half. We did in the second.”

Given what happened in this game last year and just the historic win that it ended up becoming, what does that mean for the future of this team, to be able to kind of get past that hump and come out on top today?

“Yeah, I mean, certainly it means, I’m sure we’ve accomplished some things today. I think getting the 10 wins is going to set us up to continue playing football and continue chasing the big prizes. I think that they’re going to have a confidence and a belief that no matter what the situation in the game is, they’re going to have a chance to win because, you know, and then I think hopefully they’re going to have an understanding of what it takes to get themselves mentally locked in every week regardless of what their perception of the game outcome might be, that they better have themselves locked in and ready to play.”

Hey, Coach, looking ahead. Obviously, you got Sanford, Texas upcoming. But could you talk about potential college football black opponents in the state of Texas, for example, Texas?

“I got no interest in talking about potential playoff opponents.”

Was just wondering if anything was said to you or any other coaches to Ashton Bethel-Roman, after he dropped the pass and before he caught the touchdown.

“Just some encouragement, like, let’s go get it together. You’ll be all right. We’re gonna keep coming to you. And again, that’s football a little bit, right? You know, some of the worst drops he probably had in his career, and probably one of the best catches he’s ever had in his career, and so she had to keep playing. Yeah, I mean, obviously critical. The two big plays were huge. KC had a huge second half. Obviously, Marcel had a huge second half. We were really able to get the passing game unlocked a little bit.”

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