Overreactions: Texas A&M positioned as nation’s most dangerous team, Colorado can win the Big 12, Missouri missed window

Week 9 wasn’t the greatest of slates, but it still delivered some notable results that will be very important come this time next month when teams are vying for a spot in their conference title games. 

So let’s make some overreactions on what we saw. 

The Week 9 overreactions:

With Mike Elko in charge, Texas A&M is the most dangerous team in the country

Over the summer, I wrote a column arguing that Texas A&M could be a College Football Playoff sleeper-team because of its roster, schedule, and most notably, serious coaching upgrade with Mike Elko now in charge. 

I specifically noted that after years of Jimbo Fisher barking loudly and constantly keeping Texas A&M in the headlines, all was quiet out of College Station this summer. 

“Mike Elko has turned off the microphone. And while it’s been a quiet offseason in College Station, there’s bubbling buzz behind the scenes that the Aggies might have one feisty team in 2024.” 

Everyone is certainly paying attention now — that’s for sure. 

For the second time as a head coach, Mike Elko has engineered a remarkable in Year 1 resurgence at a new program. He inherited a 3-9 Duke team in 2022, and promptly won nine games the very next season. Now in Year 1 with the Aggies, the former Texas A&M defensive coordinator has his team in the cat-bird seat for the SEC Championship and a jetway path to the College Football Playoff. 

“We back up our actions,” Elko said, turning heads after Texas A&M had a furious and dizzying rally to end up blowing out LSU on Saturday night. 

“We’re very honest. We’re very open. This is a real program. It’s not fake. It’s not a politician running this program, talking fast and BSing everybody.”

Was Elko taking a shot at Fisher or Brian Kelly? Frankly, it doesn’t matter. The rest of the country is already on notice. Texas A&M — a program that has always done less with more — looks like a rocket ship finally ready to take off under Mike Elko. 

Typically, “culture” is a hackneyed saying that’s tossed around far too cavalierly in college football parlance because it’s impossible to actually explain or quantify. 

But something has clearly changed behind the scenes at Texas A&M. 

A roster mixed with former 5-star recruits like Shemar Turner and Shemar Stewart and ballyhooed transfers like Nic Scourton, Dezz Ricks and BJ Mayes has finally lived up to its potential under Elko’s stewardship. 

The Aggies have won seven straight games, and the comeback Saturday night against LSU was a great example of what’s suddenly different about this team. 

They’ve always been talented. But now there’s a selflessness to them. They fight — for all 60 minutes. They don’t fold — even when the game seems to be teetering on the brink. And they’re extremely well-coached — with Elko going 3-for-3 on QB Roulette this season. 

He surprised Florida by starting Marcel Reed, and the redshirt freshman had over 300 total yards in a big road win in The Swamp. A month later, he pants’d Eli Drinkwitz, who was convinced Reed would be QB1 in the Top 25 showdown only for Conner Weigman to return and play the better game of his career. 

But Elko’s zenith was Saturday night, when trailing 17-7 and team’s offense looking totally lifeless, he pulled the plug on Weigman and inserted Reed into the game for “a spark.”

Instead, he got fireworks. A light show amid a Kyle Field blackout. 

Reed scored an eight-yard touchdown on his first play, and the backup led the Aggies to five scoring drives on five possessions — turning a 10-point deficit into a 38-23 rout. He threw the ball twice, as LSU had zero answers for Texas A&M’s read-option attack. Meanwhile, the defensive line took over the game, forcing Garrett Nussemeir into three poor picks. 

Elko has a future coaching decision to make about who starts at South Carolina this weekend, but here’s guessing he’ll get that right, too. He’s dialed in, and so are the Aggies. 

With Elko leading the charge, this is one dangerous team right now. Maybe the most dangerous team in the country.

“The price of success and the price of winning games like this is you now have a target on your back. And so what 5-0 (in the SEC) means is we’re going to have a heck of a time trying to get to 6-0,” Elko said. 

“But we have an amazing opportunity right now that we really want to take advantage of.”

Colorado can win the Big 12

The Buffs are bowl-eligible for the first time since 2016, but with a schedule that includes three of the four worst teams in the Big 12 this season, Deion Sanders’ team has their eyes on a much bigger prize — a conference title and a spot in the College Football Playoff. 

Do you believe?

You should. 

Colorado is a legitimately solid — maybe even good — football team. 

First-year defensive coordinator Rob Livingston has drastically improved that unit (22 points per game allowed in 2024 vs. 34.8 last season) and the Buffs have found a semblance of a run game the last two weeks (125 yards against both Arizona and Cincy). 

Oh, and they have the top quarterback in the country in Shedeur Sanders (another 25 of 30 for 323 yards and two touchdowns) and the best player in America in Travis Hunter (150 receiving yards, two scores and three pass breakups playing all but three snaps Saturday). 

Colorado is no longer a three-ring circus. It’s a complimentary football team that’s improving each week. 

The law firm of Sanders, Sanders and Hunter deserves all the attention right now — not because of their sound and fury but because they very well could win the Big 12. 

Welcome back to the middle-of-the-pack in the SEC, Missouri 

This was supposed to be THE YEAR OF TIGERS for Eli Drinkwitz’s program. They made huge NIL investments to pony up to keep the likes of Luther Burden III and Theo Wease on the roster. They portal’d in a slew of defensive replacements and brought back a veteran quarterback. They had a cupcake schedule, by SEC standards, too. 

But if you look like a duck. And you quack like a duck. You’re probably a duck. 

Missouri has played like a paper tiger all season. 

It got exposed against Texas A&M, but narrow wins over Boston College, Vandy and Auburn kept the Tigers nominally in the CFP conversation. But with Halloween just around the corner, the jig is up. Alabama ripped off Mizzou’s mask, revealing Drinkwitz’s team to be the ultimate pretender in a 34-0 drubbing. 

Yes, the Tigers are battered and bruised. Brady Cook was able to rise from the grave against Auburn, but he was cooked against Alabama, and didn’t last the first half. Wease was out, and so was tailback Nate Noel. 

But this was still a team that had the stripes of just another also-ran in the SEC — not a preseason title contender.

The Tigers are now 2-2 in conference play — with their losses coming by a combined score of 75-10. 

Missouri’s special 11-2 season was sandwiched around four years prior where the Tigers went 6-6, 5-5, 6-7, 6-7. The outlier was clearly 2023, and the fact is this is a middle-of-the-pack SEC program that simply caught lightning in a bottle.

With Texas in the league now, and programs like Texas A&M and Tennessee continuing the surge up the standings, Mizzou missed its tight window to seriously compete for anything anytime soon again.