Mike Elko tries to achieve what Jimbo Fisher couldn’t at Texas A&M.
Matt Zemek, 16powers.com.
Jimbo Fisher came to Texas A&M as the owner of a national championship at Florida State plus a College Football Playoff appearance with the Seminoles from the 2014 season. Fisher had also won a national championship as an assistant coach with Nick Saban at LSU in 2003, but the FSU title was his first as a head coach.
The oilmen who donate substantially to Texas A&M athletics had hoped that Fisher would win a second national championship as a head coach.
Not only did it not happen; Fisher never came particularly close. He did make a run at the brass ring in 2020, but that was an outlier year because of the COVID pandemic. Even then, Notre Dame boxed the Aggies out of the playoff. That’s as close as Fisher came to the playoff. A shaky, close Orange Bowl win over North Carolina was the biggest achievement Fisher registered in several seasons on the job in College Station. The extent of the school’s investment in Fisher was not met with a significant return. Fisher had to go, and now he is gone.
Mike Elko comes to Aggieland with an awareness of what is expected and an understanding of how to go about his business. Elko was a Fisher assistant before he took the open head coaching position at Duke following the retirement of David Cutcliffe. Elko dramatically transformed Duke and squeezed every ounce of potential from the Blue Devils. Though he doesn’t have a trophy case with national championships or College Football Playoff berths the way Fisher did when he came to Aggieland, Elko might actually be the better coach. His resume isn’t as good, but his coaching talent might be. If it is, Texas A&M has fresh reason to hope that it can rise to the top of the SEC.
Elko was a strong defensive coordinator under Fisher, much as he was a quality coordinator under Brian Kelly at Notre Dame. Elko spent many years in the salt mines, observing and patiently taking notes on what it took to build championship-level college football teams. He knew how to cultivate an elite defense, so when he finally got a crack at a head coaching job at Duke, there were few doubts that the Blue Devils would be good on that side of the ball. The questions all circled around an Elko offense. The thing which should make Aggie fans excited about Elko as a head coach is that instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, Elko tries to succeed on offense the same way he does on defense: with physical superiority.
Elko-coached teams are rugged, tough, and powerful. They play with force and make opponents feel the weight and strain of going against them at the line of scrimmage. Duke offenses under Elko weren’t dazzling, but they ran the ball, controlled the clock, gained first downs, leveraged field position, and worked with the defense to put the team in a position to succeed. This was complementary football, the offense working in concert with a defense under a unified style. It helped that Duke quarterback Riley Leonard had above-average speed as a runner, combined with a fullback’s toughness. Leonard, not just his running backs, was able to grind out tough yards. Duke shortened games and lengthened the field for its opponents, which greatly increased its own margin for error and put a lot of game pressure on its foes every Saturday. If Elko can import that vision and formula, A&M fans will be thrilled. There is reason to believe that Elko can cultivate a team which is tougher than anything Jimbo Fisher was able to put on the field. That is a starting point for A&M on its road to returned relevance in college football.
In a larger overall context, what will be a problem for Elko is that as well as he coached at Duke, that was in the ACC, and more specifically, an ACC in which Clemson regressed and Miami faltered. Florida State was a really good ACC team the past few years, but the conference wasn’t very deep and didn’t deliver a lot of especially formidable teams the past two seasons. Louisville, last year’s ACC runner-up, couldn’t beat Florida State even when the Seminoles had a third-string quarterback in the ACC Championship Game. That Louisville team, second-best in the 2023 ACC, got smoked by underachieving USC in the Holiday Bowl. North Carolina couldn’t make a prestigious bowl game despite having Drake Maye at quarterback. The ACC simply wasn’t the overwhelmingly difficult conference the SEC has always been. As much as Elko thrived in the ACC, it will be harder to flourish on that same scale in the SEC, a much higher rent district for the talented head coach.
However, while the SEC is going to be daunting for Elko over the longer run of his tenure at Texas A&M, this 2024 season gives the Aggies an amazing opportunity because the schedule is so remarkably favorable. A&M avoids Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Tennessee on this year’s slate. Games versus LSU, Missouri and Texas are going to be very tough, but the Aggies aren’t facing the foremost national championship contenders in the conference. There is a real chance for Texas A&M to go 10-2 against this schedule. It’s not likely, but it’s possible, especially if the Aggies can defeat Notre Dame in a huge Week 1 game which will generate considerable national attention. With the College Football Playoff expanding to 12 teams this year, keep in mind that a 10-2 record – normally not good enough to qualify for a four-team playoff – might be good enough to get into a 12-team field, particularly from the SEC.
In future seasons, A&M won’t avoid Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee on the SEC schedule. Elko is trying to settle into his new job and find a way to become an elite coach in the SEC, but he really doesn’t have a grace period or honeymoon this year because the schedule opens the door to all sorts of exciting possibilities. Mike Elko is stepping into a situation where some will say, “If not now, when?” That’s not a typical Year 1 scenario for most coaches. Then again, Texas A&M isn’t a typical college football program.
Aggie fans have to hope that Mike Elko isn’t a typical – or ordinary – college football head coach.
