Everything Texas A&M coach Mike Elko said about facing South Carolina

Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko met with the media on Monday to preview the Aggies’ upcoming matchup with South Carolina on Saturday. Kickoff is at noon on ESPN from Kyle Field.

Here’s everything Elko had to say about the matchup and the Gamecocks ahead of this weekend.

On facing South Carolina…

“Now we turn our attention moving forward to a really challenging South Carolina team, obviously, a team coming in who has played one of the most challenging schedules in the country. When you look at it, this will be their fifth straight game against a team ranked in the top 12 or higher. I can’t imagine 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 they’ve gotten. And so in my opinion, a team that is extremely talented, much better than their record would indicate, coming off of a bye week, obviously, with a lot of confidence based on what they did to us last year. And so we’re going to have a tremendous challenge on Saturday, and we’re going to need to come out and play our best football to have a chance to win.”

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When you look at the film on LaNorris Sellers, what do you see that is different about him?

“I see the same big, physical, athletic kid that ran all over us and threw all over us last year. So I see the same kid, and so our kids better see the same kid, because he absolutely lit us up last year. And so 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 had a better passing day against Alabama in a close loss. How do you think that builds up into playing this game this weekend? How have you seen your defense grow, and how would that prepare them to go up against South Carolina?

“Yeah, I think in terms of them, again, it’s an extremely talented group. They’ve got a quarterback who I think is capable of beating you with his arm and his legs. They’ve got one of the most physically impressive wide receivers I’ve seen in 30 years of college football. Nyck Harbor is 6-foot-5, 235 (pounds). He’s probably going to run 4.27 or faster at the (NFL) Combine. I hope I didn’t insult him. I hope he’s not completely faster than that, but he can absolutely fly. DBs are running away from him on the snap, and he still runs past them. It’s one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen. And so I just think that talent, they’ve also got some young kids developing and coming along at the wide receiver position that I’m sure, after a bye week, they’re going to have some really creative ways to get the football.

“When you look at them, I went through this as I talked to the staff about, like, my first year, and this is what makes the SEC different, my first year here as the defensive coordinator, we lined up against a one in five Ole Miss team who had AJ Brown and DK Metcalf and Laremy Tunsil and Kenny Knox. And I’m sure I’m missing a couple, but it was, like, that was my welcome to the SEC moment. You don’t get weeks off. All you have is teams that were able to find ways to win games, and for whatever reason, teams that weren’t, and all of that happens on three and a half hours every Saturday. And so every Saturday, you’re at risk in this conference. That’s just the way it is. And so we have to go play regardless of what their record is, 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. And so if any of our players or anyone thinks it’s going to be anything different than that, they’re kind of crazy.”

New offensive playcaller for South Carolina. Does it change how you prepare for a situation like that, especially when they were on a bye week?

“Yeah, it’s really challenging. It’s really a blank slate that they’ve had, you know, a week to look at our defense, a week to formulate a plan based off of 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. You don’t imagine they can change too much, because obviously, it’s a little bit like we talked about with Missouri. 11 kids have been running a certain system, so they’re certainly not going to completely change the entire system. But, you know, wrinkles, tweaks, different things, motions, formations, stress points, like you can change a lot in two weeks. And so I’m sure it’ll be a little bit of a whirlwind in the beginning of the game, trying to figure out where it’s going and what direction it’s heading. Obviously important to try to find ways to kind of stem that tide a little bit.”

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