The bye week is now here for Texas A&M football, and through the first eight games, the Aggies have been a profound disappointment. The Aggies came into the year ranked in the top 10; now, they're miles away from even sniffing the top 25 based upon their 4-4 record.
I wrote that yesterday's game provided a lot of reasons for hope, and I stand by that— but the fact is that it does so precisely due to how badly A&M had looked before that point. The reasons for hope is that they had improved upon the previous, horrid performances and now were looking more like a functional team.
This is a team that is reeling in a lot of ways, and one that will be quite the project to turn around after this offseason for Mike Elko— but with the bye here now, the head man for the Aggies needs to take a page out of Dan Lanning's book.
Mike Elko needs to follow in Dan Lanning's footsteps with his offensive staff
The Oregon head coach made a lot of similar mistakes to Elko this past offseason— favoring internal hires for continuity being one of the chief mess-ups. Oregon has the Dante Moore injury to fall back on as an explanation for their offensive issues, of course, but they still had one of the top portal quarterbacks come in in former five-star Dylan Raiola.
Nonetheless, Lanning made the move earlier today to dismiss offensive coordinator Drew Mehringer, 2/3 of the way into the college football season. This was a move that a lot of Duck fans were calling for, and you can understand why— for whatever expectations there were on this Aggie team, the expectations for Oregon were far loftier.
The Ducks were a popular national championship pick this offseason, and now they're back in the pack right alongside the Aggies. Lanning has recognized the issues and made the move that he needed to in order to begin addressing those issues— will Elko do the same?
There are a lot of factors that go into if and when a coach should be dismissed, of course. Do the Aggies want to keep whatever semblance of continuity that they can going into the upcoming four games, or do they want to move quickly in order to identify and land the top name on their board as soon as possible?
Of course, the issues lie deeper than just offensive coordinator— the main assistant that has given the Aggies issues is QB coach Joey Lynch, who has been at the helm during the complete regression we've seen from Marcel. Are there coaches on staff who can step into these roles on an interim basis if Elko makes the move?
There are reasons that Elko may delay, in other words— and, frankly, the optics look a little different after yesterday's offensive showing than they would have after the Missouri game. But whether or not he chooses to make this move over the bye week, a complete restructure of that side of the ball will need to occur, with only Adam Cushing being a guy that most fans would like to see stay (though there have definitely been issues with the offensive line as well).
If you know it's inevitable, though, you might as well go ahead and make the move. We'll see what this bye week brings, but if the Aggies want to be a winning program, they have to act like one.
Add us as a preferred source on Google