Comeback win over South Carolina a testament to Mike Elko’s winning culture and proves his status as an elite head coach
Texas A&M’s comeback victory over South Carolina proves that Mike Elko was the right hire for the Aggies all along
The Texas A&M Aggies pulled off one of the most ridiculous comebacks you will perhaps ever see in college football on Saturday. Down 30-3 at halftime after a truly embarrassing first half of football, the Aggies looked shellshocked in their first home game in a month while South Carolina’s head coach was celebrating heading into the locker room.
However, the Aggies are the best second half team in the country for a reason, and they proved their mettle right out the gate on the Gamecocks. In a performance reminiscent of the Golden State Warriors’ inevitable third quarter runs, A&M scored out of halftime, forced a turnover on downs, and then scored touchdowns on three straight drives to completely overwhelm the Gamecocks, flipping the script on South Carolina in 16 minutes of gametime.
In a 31-30 victory over South Carolina, the Aggies proved not only their resiliency, but also the winning culture that head coach Mike Elko has injected into the program in his short tenure.
Mike Elko is the right man for the job
Texas A&M has always been talented. It comes with the territory of being one of the oldest and most prestigious programs in college football with plenty of resources at your disposal. Under Jimbo Fisher, they raked in top recruiting classes with ease time and time again, with a boatload of NFL guys at their disposal.
But they didn’t know how to win games. Every time adversity hit, the team crumbled, folding under pressure in big games repeatedly, and losing games they shouldn’t have simply because they did not have that kind of a winning culture instilled in them. Until Mike Elko came along.
Quarterback Marcel Reed put it best after the game when talking about the Aggies’ resiliency and culture to help pull off this incredible comeback.
“We wanted revenge on this team. They put us out of the question last year, and they could have put us in a bad position this year. We got this win, and it was important for us. This team battled….in college football nowadays, there is not much culture and brotherhood. Us talking and making adjustments without coaches, it says a lot about what we have here at Texas A&M.”
It would have been far too easy for the Aggies to roll over and quit on Saturday. They played the worst game of football they possibly could have for 30 minutes, and it seemed like Murphy’s Law was taking a sledgehammer to everything the team tried at Kyle Field. But sometimes, laws are meant to be broken, and the Aggies persevered. That is the type of culture that Elko has instilled from top to bottom in this program, and that is exactly why he received the extension he did. This is a completely different A&M team than we have seen maybe ever, and he is the reason why, even if he’ll never take the credit he deserves.
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