Everything Texas A&M coach Mike Elko said about Riley Leonard, Notre Dame

Mike Elko said there will be a moment Saturday when he’s following the drums down the tunnel at Kyle Field, with his Texas A&M Aggies fixing to face the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in a season-opener of colossal magnitude, when it hits him how far he’s made it in his profession.

Elko was the defensive coordinator at Notre Dame in 2017. Then the defensive coordinator at A&M from 2018-21. Now, after two seasons as the head coach at Duke, he’s returned to the big stage as the head coach of the Aggies.

The primetime spotlight is on him, his team and its opponent in Week 1.

“Outside of that, you’re just focused on helping these guys get the result that they want,” Elko said Monday. “It’s about trying to find every angle you can, every little detail you can to pour into this game plan to give them the best chance to be successful. You really don’t have a lot of time as a head coach to sit back and think about those types of things. It’s literally just head down and go, but I would be lying if I didn’t say there would be something a little special when you’re walking down the tunnel for the first time.”

Here is everything else Elko said about the matchup against Notre Dame.

Opening statement

“Thank you guys for coming out. It’s finally here. It’s what I told the guys this morning, you spend an awful lot of time to get ready for game week is finally upon us. We’re excited.

“We’re excited for this week. We’re excited for this opportunity. I think we’ve had a really, really good fall camp. Happy with the progress we’ve made across the board. Happy with where our team is from a health standpoint going into this week to get ready for this opener. I think we’ve gotten a lot done in terms of becoming more physical, getting better, improving but also getting our guys to this week healthy and ready to roll. Excited with how that all worked out.

“From our standpoint, our focus is real simple. We want to be able to go out and play our best football Saturday night. What we talk to our guys about, I think this is really important, when you’re playing a game like this the focus has to be on all the little details from today through Saturday that give us the opportunity to go out Saturday night and perform like we want to.

“The challenge I laid out to them was go out every day and outwork Notre Dame. Someone on Monday is going to prepare better than the other team. Someone on Tuesday is going to prepare better. Someone’s going to hydrate better. Someone’s going to eat better. All those things you can do to give yourself an advantage to go out Saturday night and be successful, we have to do, because you can’t over-prepare. That’s not something that exists. You can’t be too ready for the opener.

“That’s the challenge. We’ve got to go out and have a great week of practice. We had a good Monday morning this morning as we switched to kind of a morning schedule. So we got our Monday morning in this morning. We got three more days to go out and prepare and practice and we’ll go out Saturday and be really fired up for what should be a tremendous Saturday afternoon in Bryan-College Station with ESPN GameDay here and then an electric Saturday night in Kyle Field.

Scouting Notre Dame

“As we transition to Notre Dame and kind of talking about them and their team, obviously a lot of respect for Marcus Freeman. Him and I have known each other for a long time going back to our days in the MAC when he was at Kent State and I was at Bowling Green. We would cross paths in recruiting. Defensive guys tend to follow each other in this profession. Certainly have watched him and watched his defense over the years. He’s a tremendous head coach.

“Offensively, last year they were the seventh ranked scoring offense in the country. They went out in the offseason and hired Mike Denbrock who was the leader of the No. 1 total offense and scoring offense in the country. So we expect them to be extremely prolific on that side of the ball. It starts with the quarterback who I have some familiarity with. Obviously, Riley Leonard and everything he brings to the table. A true dual-threat quarterback who can hurt you both with his arm and with his legs. So he presents a huge challenge.

“In the backfield they have always had a lot of running backs and have always been able to roll through guys. Jeremiyah Love steps in this year to be the guy, but we anticipate that being a group of guys that roll back there like it kind of always has been. Similar to us, they’ve revamped the wide receiver room a little but with some guys that have really stepped up in their program with some additions of transfers. I think one of the unique things as you’re watching film on openers, you’re watching film from about eight different colleges as you get ready for this offense. You got Duke film on there. You got FIU film on there. You got Clemson film on there. You got Notre Dame film. You got LSU film. It’s one of the unique things about going through these openers.

“At tight end, Mitchell Evans is a kid that I have a lot of respect for. He really had a huge game in Durham last year against us at Duke. Really a dual-threat kid, can hurt you in the run game but could really get open and separate in the pass game.

“Their offensive line has been kind of the blood of their program forever the lifeline of their program forever. We certainly expect them to come out and be really competitive in that area of the field as well.

“Defensively, they were elite last year. They were a top-10 defense in scoring and in total defense. They bring back a huge part of that group. I think the defensive front is where it starts. Certainly, Howard Cross being a New Jersey guy kind of always gains some respect from me but he plays the game the way you want him to. Him Rylie Mills anchor the center of that defense. The other guy on the edge who people haven’t talked about as much, RJ Oben, is also a kid who started for me two years at Duke. Really electric pass-rusher and brings a lot of value in that area.

“They’ve revamped the linebacker group but Jack Kiser will kind of anchor that. Jack’s been around for a long time. Played a lot of football. We kind of recruited him for a little bit when I was here as a defensive coordinator, so have been familiar with him for a long time. He’s a great player.

“I think they’re really elite in the secondary. Benjamin Morrison is one of the best corners in the country. Xavier Watts was an All-American last year and is really a ballhawk and can go out and find the ball. So it’s a big challenge. It’s a challenge we’ll be ready for and we’ll be excited for.”

On facing Notre Dame QB Riley Leonard, his QB for two years at Duke

“I think it’s interesting and weird and not really something I want to do. But at the end of the day it’s a part of the game. Obviously have a tremendous amount of respect for who he is not just as a player but also as a young man, his family and all of that. It’ll be three hours competing against each other and then the rest of the year rooting for him.”

On having to watch so much film in the era of the transfer portal to prepare for a team like Notre Dame

“An opener, it’s always challenging. You got to create a plan on both sides of the ball that has enough versatility because you know you’re going to have to adapt. You can’t walk into— you go into Week 10 and you can kind of talk in certainties. You go into Week 1 and you’re really not talking in any certainties. Everything you’re talking is I think, maybe, could look like this. You do the best you can to come up with the best guesses of what it will be and what it will be about, but you have to be very flexible with the plans you create because you got to be ready to adjust. The whole opener is about adjustments and what you can do and what you can adjust on the fly to give yourself the best opportunity as the game goes on to feel how it’s going and be able to have practiced enough and be prepared enough that you can go in the direction you need to go to be successful.”

On what it was like playing teams when he was the defensive coordinator at Notre Dame and if the mystique of the Irish is over-built

“Man, that’s a loaded question. I don’t know that I can answer that one right. I have a lot of respect for the brand that Notre Dame is. I think it’s an iconic brand. It’s recognizable across the country, for sure. I don’t know that for us this is necessarily tremendous excitement because it’s Notre Dame. I think it’s tremendous excitement because we’re playing a national brand who’s ranked seventh in the country in our home opener with a lot of eyes on the game. From that perspective, I think that’s how it’s viewed.”

On what impressed him most during his time as the DC at Notre Dame

“Just the history and tradition around it. Being a sports fan growing up, being a kid who always followed college football, it’s one of those programs that when you walk in the building there’s so much history and tradition in that building. When you’re seeing the four horsemen and you’re seeing some of the old Heisman Trophy winners and some of the old memories, it’s one of the more tradition-rich programs in the country.”

On facing Notre Dame’s running defense

“That’ll be one of the challenges within this game. They don’t give you a lot of soft surfaces to run the football. We’re going to have to find some. We’re going to have to make some with our offensive line. We’re going to have to make some with our tailbacks. We’ve challenged them. That’s going to have to be the game. Some teams play you in these soft boxes where you have a lot of run angles. Notre Dame won’t for the majority of the night. We’re going to have to be creative in how we give our backs space and get them going.”

On if knowing Leonard’s instincts is an advantage to A&M

“I would argue he has more of an upper-hand than we do because he’s probably a little bit more familiar with this defense than most quarterbacks we play. Not that it’s the exact defense we ran at Duke. It’s obviously blended together with what we’ve done and with what [A&M defensive coordinator Jay Bateman] brings to the table. But I think we don’t have a ton of comfort as a program going against this offense. We haven’t defended it for a single snap. Two years going against against some version of this defense that’s similar to what he’ll see Saturday night probably gives him a little but more of an advantage than it does us.”

On the pluses and minuses of playing a season-opener against a top-10 team

“The pluses are the attention you’ve had of your players for the last eight months. When you have this type of game, the sense of urgency you have in a preparation standpoint, the sense of urgency we had in training camp, you like to say that’s because of the coaches but I’m certain the opener plays a huge role in that. We did. We had a really good training camp. I thought the kids were really locked in and focused. That’s probably the pluses of it.

“The negatives of it is it’s an opener. When you have an opener and you’re playing a game that’s going to be competitive there are not tremendous margins. You’re going to have to come out of the tunnel opening night and execute at a really high level. You’re going to have to play penalty free football. You’re going to have to play turnover free football. You’re not going to have a lot of time to ease into this new program, these new systems that we’re running. You’re going to have to go out there opening night and be firing on all cylinders. That is obviously the challenge we had to take on and I think we’ve done it to the best of our ability.”

On the line of scrimmage matchups

“I think they’re critical in every game. The way you control the line of scrimmage dictates game flow so much. If you can win the line of scrimmage on defense and affect the quarterback and limit the running game, you put the other team behind the eight ball and put them in situations where they’re very uncomfortable and they have to play faster than they want to.

“Offensively, if we can control the line of scrimmage and create clean pockets for Connor [Weigman] and create running lanes for our backs I think that makes the game really easy and makes game flow really easy.

“I don’t know that it’s any more or less in the opener than it is every week. We’ve got to be a team that establishes the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. I think in this one that’ll certainly play a huge role in dictating the outcome of the game for sure.”

On a Notre Dame offensive line that has six starts among projected starters

“I think about it a little different than you guys from this perspective; I just think Notre Dame has recruited offensive line really, really well for a really long time. And if they have young kids who have entered the starting lineup, it probably means they’re NFL Draft picks.

“So when you say, ‘He’s a freshman starting on the offensive line at Notre Dame,’ my gut would be if you went back and researched that, that would end with, ‘He got drafted in the first round’ significantly more often than not. So I think the six starts maybe is a concern for them to some degree in the opener, but I’m sure these young kids they’re putting out there for the first time are extremely talented. That’s why they’ve won the starting jobs that they’ve won.

“That’s certainly how we’re preparing. We’re preparing for a typical Notre Dame offensive lineman that’s going to be really big and really talented and going to try to control the line of scrimmage. I think they’ve been a finalist for the Joe Moore Award more than they haven’t in the last eight years. I would just imagine they have some really talented young kids playing.”