Another opportunity at the Home of the 12th Man awaits the Maroon & White as Texas A&M welcomes McNeese to Aggieland this weekend. On Monday, Mike Elko, Cyrus Allen, Marcus Ratcliffe and Conner Weigman spoke to the media as the Ags turn the page to Week 2.
The following are live, paraphrased notes from the Monday afternoon media availability:
Mike Elko
- Wrapping up, not a whole lot different than my thoughts after the game. We had an opportunity to set this season off on a good foot and couldn't get it done.
- As regards Conner Weigman, it looks like his feet never got settled. He had much cleaner pockets than he played like. He is confident in the corrections he needs to make. It is not all on him. We need to do a better job of getting the passing game on track.
- The 3rd and five on the last drive and didn't make the play. We started pressing and gave up uncharacteristic runs. Hats off to Notre Dame so now we go back to work.
- R.C. Slocum is a distinguished alumnus of McNeese. TexAgs journalist Ryan Brauninger is an alumni, I wouldn’t say distinguished, of McNeese.
- Defensively, McNeese has been really good through two games. They're very similar, structure-wise, to what we do and the way we play.
- Certainly some pieces on their roster that we need to respect and prepare for, but at the end of the day, just like last week, it's going to be about us and playing to our standard.
- I don’t know what I liked. I’m a football coach. We lost. We made some strides and improvements on the offensive line. The long pass play they made was extremely contested. That stuff will happen.
- We have to play faster at wide receiver. At times, we were feeling it out, though. Terry Bussey is a talented kid, and we are getting him going.
- I don’t know that if Le’Veon Moss was struggling, I would say you pull him. Same with Noah Thomas. We have a memory bank of thousands of reps. Everyone else has seen 70.
- Conner got hit in the gut and puked. I don't think conditioning played a role.
- Both centers added what they wanted to add. T.J. Shanahan stepped up, too. Mark Nabou Jr. is out for the rest of the year. That is why Koli Faaiu came in, and he will play a majority of the games at center.
- I don't think we got pushed around on the line of scrimmage. We have to do a way better job of leveraging the football. That's why most of the big runs happened.
- Conner’s play is probably just the rustiness. Nobody diminishes what it is to go out in front of 108,000 at Kyle Field. Kids have to learn how to play through that. For whatever reason, his feet didn’t follow.
- I think Conner will respond great. He is competitive and a winner. The kids are confident in him, and he is confident in himself.
- We have to be more multiple in how we attack people.
- Continuing to look internally at our own faults. The challenge I laid out is if 150 people look in the mirror and improve, we will be better. If they point the finger, we make no progress. We are not where we want to be. It’s the mindset of continuing to work. We are so quick to externalize failure.
- Nabou’s injury is a lower leg deal. It’s an impact because Mark is a really good football player.
- One of the things I have learned being at A&M before is if you don't want anything to get out, don't tell anyone. “Power” coming back was something we sat on for a long time. I didn't think I needed to ask or tell the players. I know what that song means to Kyle Field, so I brought it back.
- I thought a new era, a new field. We wanted to dress up Kyle Field.
- When you play a game, you have to learn. Even when you win, you have to learn. It's a 12-game season. Ideally, we would be 1-0 talking about that. Unfortunately, we are not.
- Koli is fine. He just got knicked up. He’s a kid that played a lot of football. That center battle went all the way until Thursday.
