Mike Elko explains what led him to hiring Collin Klein as offensive coordinator

When Mike Elko took over at Texas A&M earlier this month, one of his first priorities was to hire an offensive coordinator. The search took him to Manhattan, Kansas, where he managed to land Kansas State OC Collin Klein.

That answered a very important question for Elko, who spent the last two years at Duke before taking over for Jimbo Fisher. It opened plenty of doors — especially when it came to recruiting.

“That obviously, I think, was the priority hire because that’s the one that everybody wants to know. What will the offense look like and what will the scheme look like?” Elko said. “We’d have had a heck of a time trying to recruit without that position.”

As he searched for an offensive coordinator, Elko said there were a few factors in play. But as a longtime defensive coordinator, he wanted to look at certain parts of the offense and go from there.

While there are some aspects of film breakdowns he can hear from others, Elko wanted to look at it all himself before making any decisions.

“I kind of locked myself in my office,” Elko said, “and you go through names that you think make sense and you have some names that you think fit. And then you really just dive into, ‘What does this offense look like? How do they sequence plays, how do they play-call, how does it evolve game to game?’

“That’s a process that, to me, you can’t play around with. I don’t really take anyone’s word for that at all. That’s something I just dive into myself. I did the same thing when I got to Duke.”

From there, Mike Elko got into a list of names. It started with “about eight,” he said, before he got down to a select few. Finally, he started to decide on Klein — for reasons both on and off the field.

“One, he’s extremely bright. Like, extremely bright,” Elko said. “And I think the way he can teach our young men how to execute on offense, really, kind of took me real quick. And I think diversity in how he attacks people. I think if you watch his offense from this year vs. last year, it’s completely different based on his personnel, what they emphasize. It’s not, obviously, a completely different scheme, but it’s completely different in terms of how they’re emphasizes different players. I like how he mixes up tempos, I like how he mixes up personnels.

“And then, he’s a great person, and that’s the final piece of this is making sure that we add great people into this building. His family was down here for the first recruiting weekend, his wife. I just think we’ve added great people to the Texas A&M community, and that’s really important, too.”