HOUSTON — Texas A&M football head coach Mike Elko said Monday at the Texas High School Coaches Association convention that the two words this offseason have been “consistency” and “urgency.”
The Aggies have improved every year under Elko. They went on an 11-game win streak in 2025 and made the College Football Playoff. But the coach understands that A&M’s process of getting those wins wasn’t always the cleanest.
“Last year what we showed was that at our peak, we were good enough to play with and beat anybody in the country,” Elko said. “We also had too many times where we didn’t play at our peak.”
A&M’s comebacks against LSU and South Carolina were exciting, but the emotions masked the lulls that put the team in the deficit in the first place. Those flaws revealed themselves in the final two games of the season, especially in the CFP loss to Miami. Quarterback Marcel Reed had been great for a majority of the year, but faltered against the Hurricanes’ ferocious defense. He completed 25 of 39 passes for 237 yards and two interceptions.
A&M’s defense, which held running back Mark Fletcher Jr. in check for three quarters, broke in the fourth, leading to the game-winning touchdown. While the Aggies were capable of matching the top college teams, they lacked sustainability.
Elko said fixing that issue has been the primary focus this offseason. The offensive scheme also may shift under Holmon Wiggins, as A&M might lean more on Reed’s arm than it has in the past. But no matter how much work they put into it, the Aggies won’t know if things have improved until September.
“People asked me last year, ‘Have you gotten better at finishing?’ I don’t know. We’ll find out when we get to the end of the season,'” Elko said. “Have you gotten more consistent? I don’t know. We’ll find out when we start playing games.”
While balancing the transfer portal and high school recruiting is a common topic in the modern landscape, Elko said he doesn’t believe the two are as related as some might think. With the two processes occurring at such different times of the year, he said the decisions made are often separate. If high school recruiting is equivalent to the NFL draft, the coach sees the portal as free agency.
“We want to draft a certain amount of high school freshmen every single year because that’s where you build your foundation,” Elko said. “You get to the end of the season, and you inevitably have some holes in your roster that you plug.”
In fact, Elko said sometimes coaches use the portal as an excuse not to recruit a high schooler. It’s a convenient shield that allows them to dodge responsibility.
“They can hide behind the portal and say, ‘Oh, I can’t take your guy because I have to take this portal guy,'” Elko said. “When the reality is those things happen at completely different times in the cycle.”