Texas A&M football's Mike Elko mounts fiery defense of Conner Weigman in presser

Texas A&M football's Mike Elko: Rumors and lies about Conner Weigman "absolutely embarrassing"

Texas A&M football just notched one of their biggest wins of the entire year—and, in all reality, even longer than that—behind a huge day from quarterback Conner Weigman. This was the first that we had seen from Conner against a Power 4 team since the opener against Notre Dame, and he looked about as good as you could have hoped.

Elko took the podium, starting off with a pretty normal opener. "We challenged them to play a complete game, and I thought we did that," he said of his team.

Then, he praised Weigman and Le'Veon Moss: "Conner obviously came out and had a heck of a day, 18/22. Le'veon, again, running the ball for an 11.5 average. We dominated the rushing game, we won on third down, we won on touchdowns in the red zone."

To close his opening statement, though, Elko had some stuff to get off his chest about some things that have been said about no. 15 over the last few weeks. There have been some nasty rumors and personal criticism of Conner in the guise of discussion about the quarterback position, and Elko had had enough.

"You can challenge Conner for how he plays, and you can be upset with Conner for how he throws the football. Some of the stuff that has been said about this kid and written about this kid... is embarrassing. Absolutely embarrassing, the stuff that gets out there on this kid."

He continued: "This kid's a winner. He's a competitor. He does everything that he needs to do for Texas A&M football, and there's a lot of people right now that need to stand up and recognize what they've said over the last three weeks and take some... ownership over it. "

Strong words from the head man in defense of his QB1. You love to see that out of your coach.

He wasn't done there, though, elaborating a bit more on what exactly made him so angry about the attacks on Weigman.

"How false and fictitious it all was. Not criticism of him as a quarterback. You can criticize him as a quarterback. He stood up here, he owned his performance. We're all in this arena to be criticized. That's sport."

"When you start taking personal shots on a kid and you start talking about personal things that are grossly fictitous and grossly false, and those things become stories and start running, that's embarrassing."

This should hopefully put all that talk to bed. It was ridiculous then, and looks even more ridiculous now.

Elko, for his part, thinks this team can still improve.

"We're 5-1, 3-0 headed into a bye week, that's all we are," the Aggie head man said. "Can we play better? Yeah, I think we can play a lot better. I still think there's a lot of things out there we can... fix and do better. We're in a growth mindset. That's how we talked about this thing... We didn't flinch when we didn't get the job done against Notre Dame. We just kept grinding... We gotta still keep working."

Not long before he exited the podium, he was asked about the Theo Wease blanket debacle from earlier today.

"My suggestion would be that you should go ask Eli where that came from, 'cause I have a strong feeling that came from the other side and had nothing to do with Texas A&M, Will Lee, or anyone over here. So, you should point that one on the other side."

Well... there you have it.