Despite dominant victory, Mike Elko trashes one key area of Texas A&M’s defense they will need to correct moving forward
One key area of Texas A&M’s defense was exposed by Missouri, and head coach Mike Elko has had enough.
The Texas A&M Aggies are undefeated and are on one of their best starts ever, putting up numbers they haven’t done in decades, and have passed through every SEC test like a hot knife through butter. Their latest victim was the Missouri Tigers, who the Aggies took down with a strong second half performance, pulling away with a 38-17 victory.
Thanks to a gutsy call by Mike Elko, the Aggies were able to shut down the last gasp of momentum Missouri had in the third quarter with a fake punt. The offense sprung to life, scoring in every drive following that fake punt, and Texas A&M never looked back. However, it wasn’t all sunshine & rainbows and ho-hum for the Aggies. The defense had another uncharacteristically off game, and Mike Elko made sure to let his players know how he felt about their efforts after the game.
If the Aggies want to make a deep run in the College Football Playoffs, they have to iron out their issues here, especially if they have to take on a team like Ohio State, Notre Dame, or Oregon, who all have the talent to exploit what almost put the Aggies on upset alert against Missouri on Saturday.
Mike Elko shreds A&M’s defense
Missouri had a true freshman quarterback starting against Texas A&M. With that fact in mind, there is no way they were going to ask him to throw the ball often against the Aggies’ ferocious pass rush, meaning that the Tigers were going to have to run the ball early and often to get anything done offensively.
Despite everyone knowing that entering the game, A&M repeatedly gave up chunk plays on the ground. Time and time again, poor tackling and gap integrity bit the Aggies and cost them drives. Their poor run defense against Missouri kept the Tigers in the game, and was what led to them almost completely flipping away from the Aggies in the third quarter before the fake punt. Missouri ran for 207 yards, and two running backs crossed the 100-yard mark on the day, with both cashing in a touchdown.
After the game, Elko thrashed his defense’s performance against the run, expressing his frustrations with their poor efforts against an offense that should have been fairly straightforward. “One guy had 17 carries for 110, and one guy had 13 for 109. We did an awful job adjusting to both one them. We’ve got to get our run-defense tightened up from a consistency standpoint. Overall, we did the things we needed to do, held them to 17 points and did well on third downs. For the most part, we played well, but we’ve got to get our rush defense consistent.”
Elko is right from a broader perspective. Texas A&M gave up only 77 yards passing against Missouri, their lowest total allowed this season. They forced two fumbles, had two sacks, and 7 tackles for loss on the day and held Missouri to just 17 points. However, the Aggies will play better teams than Missouri moving forward, and this isn’t the first time their run defense has been exposed this season in conference play.
If they don’t get it fixed, the better competition they’ll play in the postseason could exploit it far better than Missouri was able to.
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