Aggies Hold Bowling Green Week Press Conference

Mike Elko, EJ Smith, Albert Regis and Cashius Howell discussed the Florida win and looked ahead to Bowling Green on Monday as Texas A&M held its latest weekly press conference.

Quotables: Mike Elko

OPENING COMMENT:

Thanks for coming out. Recapping the game, I think, one of the things I didn't touch on post-game that I do want to make sure I say, I think one of the things I'm probably most proud of is that was by far and away the most effort and strain that our team has put on tape since I've been here. I know it's only been three games, but I just thought we played harder than we did the first two weeks, and that was something that we really challenged them to do. I think that showed up all over the tape, and so we were excited for that. A lot of the keys to victory we talked about coming out of the game. But again, when you win the turnover battle in an SEC game on the road 3-0, that's going to lead to success a lot. We were really good on conversion downs, both sides of the ball. I thought that was a critical piece of this thing. You know, twice we had offensive drives start inside the 10-yard line, and we were able to take them all the way down the field and score. And so I think those are the positives coming out.

Negatives, obviously, the penalties are something we've got to get cleaned up quickly. They came in a lot of different ways. We had pre-snap penalties. We had blocking penalties. We had over-aggression penalties. And so those kind of just cropped up out of nowhere a little bit. And so we've got to get that fixed really quick. Just all in all the way we finished the game wasn't good enough, especially on defense and special teams. We've got to learn how to play the complete four quarters in the right way.

From our standpoint, our linemen of the week where Shemar Stewart on defense and Trey Zuhn on offense. Trey Zuhn was also the SEC offensive lineman of the week, so we're excited for him. Our players of the week, Marcel Reed on offense, Cashius Howell on defense, and Taurean York was special teams player of the week. Excited for those guys.

ON SATURDAY'S OPPONENT, BOWLING GREEN:

As we flip the page, moving ahead to Bowling Green, obviously a school that's very dear to me. Spent five years at Bowling Green as a defensive coordinator. Our family absolutely loved that town. We have a lot of really fond memories, a lot of really good friends that live up in Bowling Green. A lot of respect for that school, a lot of respect for that university and their program. Coach Scot Loeffler, their head coach, I've known for a long time. Have gone against him back when he was an offensive coordinator and I was a defensive coordinator I think it was three times that I counted that we went against each other. So very familiar with him and what they do on offense. He does a really, really good job offensively. They've got a really talented group on offense. They have quarterback Connor Bazelak, who was at Missouri the last time we actually won a road game, he was the quarterback for Missouri that day in a little bit of irony. They've got three really talented running backs. They've got a wide receiver who transferred in from Auburn. They've got a tight end who's leading the country in reception yards for a tight end, a really talented football player. They've got five offensive linemen who are multi-year starters. And so it's a really experienced offensive group. They present a lot of stress on you with how they run their system. They do a really, really good job. And so this is a talented group for sure.

Defensively, they're led by Steve Morrison, I know him a lot from my days back in the MAC. He's been the defensive coordinator now at Bowling Green for six years and they play like it. They play like a group that's really comfortable in the system. They're able to jump in and out of four-down and three-down fronts. They've got some experienced athletic kids up front. They got a linebacker, Joseph Sipp, in the middle who's a really talented player, can go sideline to sideline, makes a ton of plays. And they've got an elite corner in Jordan Oladokun out on the outside. And so they're talented at every level. They're going to present problems. And we've got to get ourselves ready to play. And so that's kind of where we're at.

YOU MENTIONED YOUR TIME AT BOWLING GREEN. JUST HOW INFLUENTIAL WAS THAT ON YOUR COACHING JOURNEY AND MAYBE SOME OF THE THE KEY THINGS YOU LEARNED, SOME OF THE KEY MOMENTS ALONG THE WAY DURING THOSE FIVE YEARS?

I think that was my first Division I defensive coordinator job. And so, you know, learned a lot. Probably got there not quite ready to be a Division I defensive coordinator and I think certainly left with one of the best defenses in the country. And along the way started to shape this package into what it's become. Certainly, what it meant to be a coach and a defensive coordinator at the Division I level, managing staff...and then just relationships. I think there's so many players...Wake Forest and Bowling Green are probably the two places where I have the most connections, and Bowling Green, probably the most. I think there's like seven or eight kids from Bowling Green coming out to the game this weekend. And there will be people on the sidelines and stuff that I've known for a long time. So I just think the relationships and the connections.

IN 2020 GAME THREE AGAINST FLORIDA IN THE SECOND HALF THE OFFENSIVE LINE JUST KIND OF TOOK OVER AND KIND OF CREATED THE IDENTITY FOR THAT OFFENSE FOR THAT YEAR. DO YOU FEEL LIKE THERE WAS SOME KIND OF SIMILARITY BETWEEN WHAT YOU SAW IN THAT GAME AND WHAT YOU SAW THIS OFFENSIVE LINE DO ON SATURDAY?

That's a tough question...I don't I don't think I paid any attention to our offensive line in 2020 other than I knew they were good. I will say this. We've asked our offensive line to be the identity of our program. I think that's how you want your program to be. We've challenged them in a lot of little areas, right? Pick our running backs up. Protect our quarterback. Play harder than everyone else on the football field. Conduct yourself a certain kind of way. Like that, to me, is what your offensive line should be. And that part for sure we had going back in 2020 and 2021 when I was here last time. And that's how that program went. These kids have kind of embraced wanting to be that for our program. So every time you go out there and you see our kids pushing piles and running to pick people up and clearing people off of our backs and getting our backs up off the ground, those things to me mean an awful lot about what your program stands for and and what the culture of your program looks like. So, yeah, I think from that perspective, some of the intangibles.

SEEING WHAT BOWLING GREEN DID TO PENN STATE A COUPLE WEEKS AGO, DID SOMETHING LIKE THAT KIND OF HELP OPEN THE EYES TO THE TEAM THAT THIS COULD POTENTIALLY BE A TRAP GAME?

We get ready for Bowling Green because we respect every opponent we play, and we know everyone can beat us. And so I don't think of it as a trap game. I don't think of as an out-of-conference game. I think of it as a must win Saturday night in Kyle Field. And so that's how we're going to treat every game we play. This one is no different. They're a talented football team regardless of their results. The focus will and always is on us and our ability to play our best football, for sure. But I think if we ever take the football field thinking about any of the things you just said, we're going to be in a lot of trouble. And so we're just going to focus on each opponent and play the best football we can.

PLAYING THE FIRST SEC GAME ON THE ROAD IN A HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT, IS THERE SOMETHING SPECIFIC YOU MAYBE DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT YOUR TEAM THAT YOU LEARNED ABOUT YOUR GUYS' RESOLVE OR CAN DO ATTITUDE THERE?

Yeah. I mean, I think the one thing you can take away from that game is the way we overcame adversity. Sometimes you go on the road and everything kind of goes your way and it feels like it's an easier game. I don't think that's what happened. The first drive, we overcame three penalties. We get up, we get a lead, and all of a sudden we get a lightning delay. We go into halftime with a lead, we play a real bad drive coming out of halftime, and all of a sudden now it's a game again. And the crowd's going. So it wasn't like...I didn't feel like the ball just bounced our way all day. I felt like there were a lot of times in the course of the game where it could have really swung the other way, and I thought our kids really dug in and continued to make plays throughout the course of it, all the way to Bryce's interception that I think really put the game away. And so, yeah, I think probably that. On the road, in an environment that was uncomfortable for us, we stood through a lot of adversity and continued to play the way we're capable of.

GETTING BACK TO THE ADVERSITY, DO YOU FEEL THAT YOUR TEAM WON THAT GAME TWICE? YOU GO OUT IN A HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT, HAVE DOMINATED, THEN YOU'VE GOT TO GO BACK IN. A LOT OF TEAMS DON'T HIT THE RESET BUTTON. IS THAT LIKE A DOUBLE DOSE OF CONFIDENCE?

You know, I don't know about from that standpoint. But obviously I liked...I thought there were a lot of times where we had to make plays to put it away, right? You know, for sure that first drive, The Swamp was rocking and we certainly put ourselves behind the eight ball a couple times with penalties and got out of that. And then you go in the locker room and it's like, okay, hey, we've got to make sure we stay focused. Let's not come out flat. And we're able to come out of that break and pretty soon after put together the 99-yard drive. So then you go in with a lead, and then you come out in the second half and it's like, okay, let's go play good football. On the first drive, they kind of go right down the field and now all of a sudden it's a two-score game and it's going again. And we respond again. We respond with the interception. So I just felt like there were a lot of responses that we made to the big moments in the game. And that's what you have to do on the road to win football games. And we made them on both sides of the ball and that was really good to see. So I think the kids will walk away from all of that just knowing that they went on the road together and got the W. It's naive to think that that wasn't a little bit of a weight on their shoulders, how long it had been. So, from that standpoint, probably more so than, than the delay part of it, I think they walk away feeling like they accomplished something.