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Just go to indeed.com/bluewire right now and support our show by saying that you heard about Indeed on this podcast, that's indeed.com/bluewire, terms and conditions applied. If you want to see George Clooney and Brad Pitt's new movie WOLF is on Apple TV+ September 27th. That's what I want you to be now. So if you want to see George Clooney and Brad Pitt, go to Apple TV+ and you got to start the story there. Or if you want to see Brad Pitt and George Clooney, go to Apple TV+ and join the show. And if you want to see their new movie WOLF, you can't do it. We can't help you. I can do it. Do it. Definitely go to Apple TV+ and it is cool. Okay, fine. It's very cool. WOLF is streaming September 27th on Apple TV+ and we did our. Trevor, let's get into part three of our breakdown today. We're going to look at, take a little bit of a deeper dive into Texas A&M. And this is the fun part for me because now this isn't about recruiting rankings or stats. This is about personnel and scheme. And when you look at Texas A&M, I have two main thoughts about this team. Number one is I don't believe this team right now today is as good as people think that it is. We'll find out if I'm right or wrong on Saturday night to a degree. It's a good team, but it's not what some people make it out to be. It's not a team that should be a home favorite over a team like Notre Dame. If you were playing NC State who's only ranked like two spots behind Notre Dame, the odds are pretty good that Notre Dame's not favored to lose that game, although I could look at last year's Notre Dame NC State game and see what the spread was. I'd be curious what the spread was in that game last year. But the point is is they are and we're going to see how it's played out. I don't think they're quite the Notre Dame was a seven and a half point road favorite over NC State last year, who by the way was a nine win team last season, but different conversation for a different day. The point is this is what the perception is, but what I will also say is I if I'm looking at this as a national analyst, take just a Notre Dame game out of this. I'm excited for the future of Texas A&M football with the arrival of Mike Oco. I am because he he can recruit. So you're not going to have a problem recruiting top players, he'll get top players, but he's a great evaluator of talent. So there's going to be times A&M says, no, we don't want that guy that rivals or two, four, seven or on three things as a five star because I want this kid over here who's not in the top 300 because I know how to evaluate players, kind of like when he went and brought in Jeremiah, who's the core Moa, the Notre Dame, who he was recruiting awake, and he's like, no, no, we need to bring that guy to Notre Dame, right? He's a great evaluator of talent, in my opinion. He hired a very good staff, love his D line hire, Sean Spencer, love his, his offensive coordinator, hire of Colin Klein. He brought his O line coach from Duke, who did a really nice job building a really good O line at Duke last year with not a lot of talent outside of Graham Barton. And you know, he put a good staff. I have some questions, you know, Jay Bateman is the D coordinator, but the end of the day, this is Mike Oco's defense, right? The future of Texas A&M Trevor with the arrival of Mike Oco is very bright and we're going to dive into some of the things we like and what they do that are going to kind of play into this, but I really, really like this hire. And I think the future of Texas A&M football is as bright as it's been in a long, they've had some mediocre coaching hires in the last 20 years. In my opinion, this is my opinion. I think this is the best hire they've made since our C slow come left. I truly believe that, truly believe that the whole one 10 plus win season in 20 years in the next five years, I'd be willing to bet you $1,000 that in the next five years, Mike Oco's going to have more 10 plus win seasons in five years than A&M's had in the last 20. Like I wholeheartedly believe that I have that kind of faith in Mike Oco and what he's going to bring. I'd still know that we should expect that to happen game one, that that's the only thing I would say. Prize picks is America's number one daily fantasy sports app with over five million active members. Prize picks is the easiest and most exciting way to play daily fantasy sports. Unlike other apps on prize picks, it's just you against the numbers. All you do is pick more or less on two to six player stat projections and watch the winnings roll in. Get in on the daily action with your friends and become part of the prize picks community today. 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For me, I think Riley Leonard is going to go above two thousand five hundred and fifty and a half yards, so I'm going to take that one and I'm going to combine it with Quinn yours to throw two thousand nine hundred and ninety nine and a half yards. Put those together and bang bang boom baby. I'm going to be a winner. You just wait and see. I'm coming up on my one year anniversary of depositing my first ten dollars and I received an instant ten dollar bonus. If you have the skills you can play for a shot at turning your ten dollars into a thousand dollars. Download the prize picks app today and use code Irish for a first deposit match up to a hundred dollars. That's code Irish on prize picks for a deposit match up to a hundred dollars. Prize picks run your game. You've had Wendy's nugs dipped in sauce, but have you had them covered in sauce? Wendy's new saucy nugs takes the crispy and spicy nugs that you love and turn them up to eleven. Choose between flavors like buffalo, honey barbecue, garlic parm or if you're a real heat seeker, try spicy ghost pepper only on Wendy's signature spicy nugs. I dare you. That's seven delicious ways to try the nugs you already love. Pick a flavor, grab some extra napkins and prepare to nug like you've never nugged before. For a whole new way to nug, it's got to be Wendy's at participating U.S. Wendy's. The thing that I love the most about Mike Elko is you can almost track and not almost. You can go back and track that a lot of the programs that he is spending his time in and being a part of get increasingly better with his arrival and usually pretty quickly. Right. Really quickly. Pick the Notre Dame defense turned around from 16 to 17, right. And then he goes and he becomes the defensive coordinator for Texas A&M under Jim Bowfisher, which was the last time that Texas A&M was really a threat in the SEC, right? And then Elko left and look what happened. Then look what he did at Duke. They were a nine and twenty five, ten and twenty five team before. Yep, ten and twenty five team before Elko came into town. And since then, they turned around the program and the narrative with them changed and they started out the year last year upsetting a top ten ranked team in Clemson at home, which is arguably their biggest win in program history. And he was able to do that after a year, I want to say two. So the places that Mike Elko goes, he has a track record of turning around programs extremely quickly due to the fact that he knows how to attract talent, he knows how to get that talent to come to wherever he's at, as he has a natural eye for it. He did the same thing at Notre Dame. And the evaluation piece is key. It's going to, it's so important because it's not just about going out and getting highly ranked guys. It's about getting guys that you believe can play and fit your system. And he has so far has been very good at recruiting to his system. He understands, okay, yeah, that guy's a four star top hunter player, but he doesn't fit what we do. So I'm going to get that guy that maybe is not ranked as high. That's going to be a better player for us because of what we do. He very much understands the fit part. Like you look at some of these corners they got in the portal and we'll talk about that here in a little bit, not elite players and not not my opinion, future high round draft picks, but guys that are great fits for what he wants to do defensively. And that's an important part to this whole thing, man, is it's one thing to be able to get ranked players or talented players. But if you're not getting guys that fit what you do and can thrive specifically in how you run your program, not just schematically, but just how you go about your business every day, it's going to be hard for you to go out and really maximize your success as a program. And that's something that Mike Elko has done a great job of and why I think that the future of Texas A&M is very bright. Let's first dive into the offense, though, Trevor, and we're going to talk about the movie made there because I think one of the most important things that a head coach can do is what moves do you make on the side of the ball that's not your specialty. And it's interesting, but the guy that he hired to run his offense is a guy that Notre Dame interviewed and liked a lot when they were looking to hire a new coordinator in 2022 or 2023 following the 2022 season, that's Colin Klein from Kansas State. And when you're talking about this Texas A&M offense, we'll get into the personnel and all those type of things. But I believe that Colin Klein was a strong hire. My only question will be how quickly can they adapt to what he wants to do, but just looking big picture kind of taking the thousand foot view of the whole thing, looking at this long term because this hire is meant to be a long term, you're going to build this thing over time, not necessarily for game one, but where are you in game 100? I think this is a really strong hire one. If not for Mike Denbrought getting hired at Notre Dame and Chip Kelligan, Ohio, Ohio State, which were kind of the big newsy type of hires, this outside of those two, this might be the best offensive coordinator hire that was made outside of those two in all of college football, this past hiring cycle, I really think that highly of Colin Klein from what we've seen at Kansas State. I really like the Colin Klein hire. He reminds me a lot of what Todd Moncken did for Georgia using multiple tight end sets and a lot of pre snap motion, which I know we'll dive into, but I, very similar to you, I evaluate like how when Marcus Freeman and Notre Dame brought in Mike Denbrought to take over the offense, it's not a miracle to say if you're a defensive minded head coach, the defense is going to be good. I would hope so. That's where all of your background knowledge is and that's what you have the most experience in. So I think if you are a defensive minded head coach or on the flip side, an offensive minded head coach, you need to be able to get somebody that balances out your expertise. And I think Mike Elko found a guy like that in Colin Klein, because if you don't on either side, you have your, you know, you have your situations like Lincoln Riley's a genius offensive mind. And every Lincoln Riley coach team, the defense isn't that great because you've got to get the people in the position to help the other side of the ball be successful. And I think Colin Klein is going to be able to do that for Texas A&M. The interesting thing is Trevor is he was at Kansas State for a while. He obviously finished his career in 2012, spent a year kind of bouncing around, trying to play professional football quickly realized he was not a professional football player. He was not so he comes to Kansas State, spends two years as a GA, then spends one year at Northern Iowa and then he came back to Kansas State and he's been there ever since. He was there in 2017 as their offensive court as their quarterbacks coach and basically had that role until 2022 when he was named the offensive coordinator and the quarterbacks coach at Kansas State. And you look at the results, I like looking at what did guys do compared to where they where they were before. When you look at his first year at Kansas State as a position coach, they averaged 32.3 points per game. And then after that, it was 22.5, 29.6, 26.6, 27.5. He gets promoted to offensive coordinator for 2022. They jump up to 32.3 and then in his second season there, they jump up to 37.1. And when they lost games last year, they lost game 27 to 30 to Missouri at Missouri. They lost 21 to 29 at Oklahoma State, 30 to 33 at Texas and then 35 to 42 against Iowa State. And weren't exactly losing games last year because their offense couldn't move the ball in big moments, you know, and it very begins to good teams. They lost because their defense wasn't wasn't as good as they needed to be in some of those games. But you see an immediate jump in what they did offensively when he was his time to kind of take over and run that offense. And I think that matters. And if you look at some other peripheral numbers first, so his last three years is just a position coach, K State averaged 358.9 yards per game, 5.6 yards per play. The next year they were 337.4 yards per game, 5.6 yards per play, and then 361.9 yards per game and then 6.3 yards per play. Jump up to him being in charge, it goes 418.8 yards per game and 6.1 yards per play. So up in yards slightly down in yards per play. And then they jump up this past year to 445.2 yards per play, 6.0 yards per play. So other than one year, much better in a total yards per play and total offense standpoint with him in charge. I mean, noticeable just like that. Now, you know, you had some good players there, but they were doing this with agent Martinez and Will Howard at quarterback who I don't think either one of them are world beaters. He did have a great player in Deuce Vaughn a couple of years ago, but one of the things that I like about Colin Klein is he goes out and loses Deuce Vaughn, who had 1558 yards in 2022 and loses Adrian Martinez, who rushed for over 600 yards and had 10 touchdowns. Comes out this past year and they're rushing per game average only went down four yards and their yards per average per play average only went down 0.1. DJ Giddens slides right into it, Trish on war, transformed floor state. He's a nice number two back. Will Howard's not the runner that that agent Martinez is, but they used him effectively. I think their first touchdown against Missouri was a read zone from like the seven yard line where he just read it and they crashed and he jumps out, right? And then they were able to kind of incorporate Avery Johnson into sort of like a role that Tyler Buckner had for Notre Dame in 2021, reached kind of came in and ran a ball. And so to be able to lose a stud like Deuce Vaughn, and then just kind of not miss a beat, score more points, have more yards, still run the football just effectively to me, says a lot about what kind of coach he is and the success he's had at Kansas State so far. Very similar to the other side of the ball, where Mike Elko does a great job at finding players that fit the scheme and to execute well, Colin Klein does a really good job at doing that at Kansas State as well. He's able to get what he was able to do for Kansas State was get them to a point where they just had to reload minor tweaks to how it was because Will Howard is not as talented of a runner. You know, they were losing out on Deuce Vaughn, you know, so minor tweaks had to be made, but he being Colin Klein is a very like I call him like a scheme demon. He does a really good job of creating space for his players to go out and navigate and make plays on space. It's great. I think Kansas, the state of Kansas had two of the best coaches in college football last year at creating running lanes for their backs. Yep. And the kid, the guy Chris Cuddle Nicky who's at Penn State and now Colin Klein is not texting him. They both had over 200 yards a game last year and both did a very good job of using a lot of different things to get the run game going because they don't always have the biggest and baddest and most talented offensive line. So what are some ways that Colin Klein does that number? There's two. There's really three things that I think are key to his run game. Number one, and this is going to be very fascinating when looking at this Notre Dame matchup. Number one is, and you talked about this when you and I were talking before the show started Trevor, very good use of 12 personnel and even in 11 personnel, moving the tight ends in position to create extra gaps and to try to create, give you extra surfaces that you have to account for as a defense. That's number one. And then combining that with really good use of quick and sudden pre snap movements, jet motions, orbit motions, things along those lines, and then the ball never doesn't always go where you think it's going to go based on the action of the backs in alignment. Combine those three things together and you understand why they've been a very good running team even though they haven't had elite talent the way that he'll have at Texas A&M the next few years, for example. And all the motion that they put in their offense is intentional, which I'm a big fan of. I don't like when teams just send a slot receiver in motion kind of jogs by, you know, the offensive line. I mean, if you're going to go by that slow just line up there. But no, he does a really good job of running out of 12 personnel, which is why I said that's very similar to what Todd Monkin did at Georgia. Now Georgia is known for having those horses up on front, you know, which I understand. But it's a similar concept, which I'm, which I'm a big fan of. At your point, they didn't have world beaters at the offensive line position, like, you know, Notre Dame teams. That's, I mean, Cooper Bebe's a really good player. I mean, that's, but they're not trotting out quitting Nelson and Ronnie Stanley and Mike Maglinci and, and, you know, Aaron Banks and Joe Walton, guys like that, for sure, a hundred percent. And he did a great job at utilizing the personnel that he had because you have to be able to run the football. And that was a key principle of his offensive scheme and he was able to find creative ways to do it. Hey, Irish Breakdown listeners, it's Urban Meyer. This fall, the game changes. Join me. Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram and broadcaster Rob Stone as we bring you a new perspective on football and culture every week. We will be joined by the biggest name in sports and talk about everything inside and outside of the lines. Let us guide you through a new era of college football. Watch triple option on YouTube or listen on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you can get podcasts. This is also why noted name tried to hire him two years ago to be the offensive coordinator. It's because Marcus Freeman is a guy that likes to run the football. And this is one of the more creative offensive minds in the game. I mean, there's, there's no surprise that his top two picks for OC that year were Chris Colin Klein and Andy Ludlick, two guys that have very creative run the football teams, right? A lot of, because he understands as a defensive coordinator how challenging it can be to defend all those extra surfaces and the motions and the shifts and the misdirection and things like that specific into the run game, a lot of inside zone, but also a nice mix of pin and pull stuff. They'll do quick wraps with their backside guards and tackles. They'll do straight pin and pull outside stuff, you know, toss, you know, like toss crack, toss sweep, buck sweep, things like that, they'll run a lot of read zone where if you try to crash too hard on the backside, get a lot of extra surfaces frontside, protect the backside with your quarterback, especially in the red zone. That's why Will Howard only had like 300 some rushing yards off your bed, nine rushing touchdowns because they love to run the read zone and the red zone. Very creative run game too that you just can't pin your ears back and crash, you know, downhill in the A and B gaps and shut down their run game because they'll get some of those balls outside of you and, you know, if you're not disciplined at the linebacker and they put a, I'll say this, they put a lot of stress on the linebackers in the secondary in the run game with the way that they get at because they'll, sometimes they'll just kind of take the linebackers out a little bit with just the surfaces and then this blocking scheme and say you're going to have to get your DBs downhill and stop us on this particular play. It puts a lot of stress on linebackers, defense events, having to trust their eyes a little bit because there's so much happening before the play, they'll send a slot receiver in an orbit motion, you know, and then you'll have running back lined up on left side and, you know, you're reading backside defensive end on a read poll, right? And so it puts a lot of very aggressive defenses, almost at a handicap. And I don't want to call it like a triple option team. But there's a lot that is thrown at you pre snap that you have to be ready for not just one certain thing. They're not good at running the ball because they lined up in, you know, the I formation and they're in 22 personnel and you know that it's coming. That's not what made them so good at running the football. But Colin Klein would have been a great fit at Notre Dame after Tommy Reese left with, you know, Notre Dame being a very much a 12 personnel team and our ability to run the ball. I mean, you give Colin Klein a running back like all your guesstimate. I mean, he's having a field day. So it's going to be, it's going to be interesting to see how that all plays out with Texas A&M. So you know what I'm glad we didn't have to see is Sam Hartman trying to run Colin Klein's offense. That wouldn't have gone as well as hope for, but it would have been fun to watch Riley Leonard, for example, run this kind of offense. And I'm very curious to see how Connor Wegman's going to fit into this offense. Yeah. Because I actually thought Connor Wegman ran the ball well in high school and he's not a runner, but he can run. I see him being very much in the Will Howard type of quarterback in this offense. They didn't do a lot of that with him last year at A&M, but I think he can do it. Now I don't know what kind of work they've put into getting him into the run game in this off season, but I'll be shocked if they're not doing some of the same things with him that they did with Will Howard last year with the just the, it wasn't complicated. They weren't running a lot of power read with Will Howard. It was a lot of read zone stuff, quarterback draw stuff where you got a good athlete who has, you know, can read a defense and then make a decision and pull the ball and run in game 12, 15 yards and then just go down. I think they, that Notre Dame will need to be prepared for that, absolutely be prepared for having this isn't going to be last year's A&M offense. And it's also not going to be what it was with Adrian Martinez or what it was when Avery Johnson was in the game last year. It's going to look a lot like, in my opinion, run game wise, what they had when Will Howard was in the game. Not a dangerous running threat, but you have to be aware of it because if you don't respect that backside pull option, he'll pull it and there's nobody there and he runs for 12 yards, easiest 12 yards to pick up in your life, have to account for those type of plays in this offense. Yeah, I don't, Will Howard is definitely a guy that if you need seven yards, he'll get you 10. If you need 20 yards, he'll get you 10, you know, with that style of offense. And I, again, I don't think Connor Wegman is known as a, a dual threat guy. He's no Riley Leonard athletically by any means. But one advantage that I do think that Notre Dame's defense has is they just got done watching this with a more athletic quarterback all off season, which I think is going to pay a lot of dividends on, on Saturday. But no, I, I do think that they need to be prepared for a little bit of that, that backside zone read where Wegman could pull it. I mean, I, I think it'll come into play in the red zone because that's when Colin Klein is the most comfortable calling that. And I think it also down a distance situations third down, third and short. You can see it, you know, that's, I think those are two down and distant scenarios where I think that you have to be wary of the quarterback's feet, regardless of if he's a world beater and a world-class track athlete or not. I'm going to see a lot of RPOs in this offense as well. Yep. A lot of, a lot of stuff where they're going to try to hit those quick slants, clants, routes, seam routes, they're going to hit the backs out of the backfield a lot. Back downs, wheel routes, angle routes, things along those lines, you're going to see some of that stuff out of this backfield. They're going to throw to the tight ends more so in some of the play action bootleg type of stuff. They didn't really throw the tight ends a ton in regard to like down the field until really last year. They did a little bit more of that last year with, with Ben's in it. But prior to that, it was more, you know, hit those, the overs, the crossers, the slide stuff, the last year, their best weapon in the pass game was their tight ends. So again, there's an adaptation to what they do in the pass game, but a lot of bootleg stuff, a lot of motion stuff, a lot of RPO stuff. And they don't run a ton of pure dropback, at least they have it. A lot of their pass game is built off their run action, which is why if you can shut down the run game early, you have the chance to have some success because I do think a lot of what they do in the throw, Colin Klein, I don't believe is a quarterback coach or an offensive coordinator that wants to just drop back and, and, and throw the ball 25 times out of pure drops. If he's going to throw the ball 30, 35 times, you're going to have maybe maybe 10 pure drops. Rest is going to be RPO, quick game, movement stuff, play action stuff, RPO stuff, which can make it a little bit harder to kind of get to the quarterback in some of those instances and you know, but that's something where no name is going to have to be prepared to handle and play with a lot. So like last year, Kansas State only gave up 17 sacks all year and a lot of that had to do with the fact that the ball just kind of gets out kind of quick. And if you can jump some of the stuff early, like like Missouri did a pretty good job of this at times, they would take away the quick stuff and allow that blitzing up the middle and get him on Will Howard on his heels and then he would make mistakes. He had some incompletions, he'd do an early pick on that kind of play where he sails a little check down to the running back, gets picked off. So I think those are things where there's, there's the, he's them, I'll say this, he's more creative, in my opinion, with the run game, then he is with the past game. The past game is a compliment to what they want to do running the football, in my opinion. That doesn't mean there's not some good stuff there, but it's really centers around what they do with their movement and their run game. If their run game struggles, their past game can struggle against good defenses, in my opinion. And that's going to be a key for Notre Dame is, is force them to be more reliant on their passing game. Colin Klein's a coordinator that absolutely likes to take calculated risks. He wants to maximize how efficient his offense can be, which is why they got the ball outs so quickly last year, giving up 17 sacks into seasons. Pretty good for being a school that's not known for having five hogs up front at the offensive line, right? I think that, you know, how he tailors his offense, getting his playmakers into space, that's what makes them so successful, but that all starts with running the football. And I think to your point, if, if Notre Dame is, is able to, to stuff that early and get kind of wagment and get pressure, which is, I know we'll talk more about this on Thursday and keys to victory, pass rush, front seven is going to play a huge role into what happens on Saturday. Now, I'm interested to see what the personnel at A&M allows him to do thrown the football because he didn't really have, I don't say the kind of athletes, because he had good athletes. What I mean is more so, he didn't have the kind of size that A&M has very often at receiver. A lot of his receivers were six, one or shorter. I mean, I'm looking at their top four pass catchers last year, top five pass catchers last year, two of them were six foot, one of them six, one, one was five, eleven, one was five, seven, five, eight. I mean, they, they haven't had a lot of those big guys, they're big guys have been really more so tight ends in a lot of different years. And so they haven't had a ton of those big tall vertical guys, 2022, they had a taller kid, Malik Knolls was a little bit of a taller kid, but it's been a lot of the quick shifty guys and that this offense needs that. That's why they got Cyrus Allen and Eloise in a tech. It's that six foot kind of guy that can stretch the field, can do stuff after the catch. It's why somebody in the chat just brought up Terry Bussey, who they moved over from the secondary, because he brings a lot of that element, that speed that after the catch. You know, you want to get guys in space, as you mentioned, they need that. But he also now has some of those big tall guys on the outside of the passing game. So those six, six guys that can, you can run play action and just throw a backside poke don't have to get creative. My guy six, six, you're safe. These are coming down. It's off the run. I'm taking a shot on the outside to either Jedi Walker who's six four or Noah Thomas who six, six, he didn't really have that type of weapon at Kansas State. I'm curious to see how he's going to be able to use that type of weapon at Texas A&M and how quickly can they incorporate that into what they, what they do. I think it one, I think it's going to make them even more of an effective run team. Having that kind of size that receiver, one of the downsizes of being a smaller shift to your guy as a receiver is you're not really known for your run blocking skills. And my old, my old quarterback coach, back in high school, he always used to say wide receivers own the big play. And that does not just mean you're the guy streaking down the field 45 yards and you're wide open by 10 yards. It is your ability to block down the field. And I look at a guy in Noah Thomas who's six, six, two hundred pounds. And in Jedi Walker who's six, four, two, oh five, I think that makes Colin Klein's ability to call plays out in space and run a little swing to the running back out of the backfield. That makes that even more dangerous. Yeah. I think that makes them a lot more of a threat in the red zone. And you don't have Cam Hart as your field corner anymore who was great at shutting. I mean, Clemson tried to do that to Notre Dame in 2022 and Cam was like, nope, not not today, brother, not happening. And what they do at Clemson is more in the same family of past game to what they do at K-State. It's more of the college spread, you know, RPO, quick game, perimeter screen, glances, look routes, now routes, yeah, take some one on one shots down the field. And we saw Notre Dame at times last year, a couple of times had some problems with that against against Clemson on a couple of plays. But overall, Clemson didn't beat Notre Dame because he was in football in either the last two years. So that's going to be a big part of this. But I like what he has there. Again, I don't think they have world beaters at wide receiver, but I don't think he needs world beaters at wide receivers for this offense to work. He needs to get the offensive line going. That's really the thing about this offense is it's going to go as well as the offensive line will take it. Now, the one thing that is going to help them as they get further into the season is is what we talked about earlier, he can scheme his way into some success running the football. If guys know what they're doing, he'll scheme his way into some success. He's got talented running backs, even without, you know, the, the, I was about to say, thought in Brooks, but that's the safety that they have, Dylan Brooks, Ruben Owens is the running back that they lost, even without him, they still have good running backs. They still have guys can play. Laby on Moss is a very good running back and my or not say very, he's a good running back. The kid that they had last year is that Amari Daniels, I believe, was their leading rusher last year, I believe he's back this year as well. So they'll have weapons there. And then of course you have a quarterback that can, can keep it and do some things with it. The offensive line is going to be the key for them. It's just like it is for Notre Dame is, is, if the offensive line can get going, pick up the scheme, just do your job. They don't need to be world beaters. Do your job. He's going to be able to scheme his way into success at some point in the season. Notre Dame just needs to make sure it doesn't happen in game one, but this was a great hire for Mike Elko for that reason, because Jim Bo's offense was so predicated on the way he ran it. He thought he was an NFL coach. It required having big time receivers and A&M just hasn't had big time receiver. You think Notre Dame's on a bit of a down streak when it comes to producing an NFL tied in receivers. Go look at A&M's lack of success producing NFL wide receivers and just good receivers and a long time. I'm actually going to go look at that. That was the last time Texas A&M, I bet you, Ryan, if you're still in the chat, do you remember who the last Texas A&M wide receiver was that was drafted in the NFL? I'm actually going to look at that. A nice Smith in the fifth round last year. Prior to that, 2018 with Christian Kirk was the last time they had a receiver drafted in the NFL. I was going to guess Christian Kirk. 23 to 2018. They didn't have a single wide receiver drafted in the NFL draft. So that's been a problem. In Colin Klein's offense, I don't think you necessarily need that. Recruit big boys, recruit some back sick and play and recruit dual threat quarterbacks. Well guess what the state of Texas produces a lot of? Big offensive lineman running backs. He's a Kansas state guy. He's been at Kansas State all but like one year of his post high school life. But he really is a good fit for success at a place like Texas A&M. I really do believe that because what he wants to do offensively is exactly what they can recruit a lot of at Texas A&M. And I think that's going to help him not only this season, but especially moving forward when they kind of get their stamp on this roster. The defensive line is going to be a big key to how successful they are going to be. And I don't want to dig too much into the stats from last year because it's a new regime. I mean, it's tough. The one thing that I will touch on is much like Notre Dame, the success on Saturday specifically is going to come down to how well both offensive lines play. But I look at them in a little bit of a different light, right? For Notre Dame, it's how good is our offensive line going to be because we just, we don't know. We haven't seen right. And for Texas A&M, it's going to be, are they going to be consistent? They have 111 returning starts on the offensive line, which is great. But in the last two years, they've had 10 different starting lineups. So I'm going to be interested to see what it looks like for them under Colin Klein because I do think that some of their offensive line, because it's SEC ball and we know how big linemen are down in Texas, they're offensive line. One thing that jumps out on papers, they are massive. But I think based on the scheme that they were in the last two years, I just don't think they were set up for success that well. So you bring in a guy like Colin Klein, I'm going to be interested to see what that adjustment is because I do have faith that he'll figure it out with the skilled players, but you combine Colin Klein's knowledge with what's the name of the offensive line coach that they just got Adam Cushing. Yeah. One of them from Duke, you combine those two guys, I think you're going to be set up well, not just for this Saturday, but the future looking on, I think is looking pretty good. Yeah. Agree. For Notre Dame, that's the key though, is you've got to control the trenches. When Colin Klein's offenses have struggled, it's because they get beat in the trenches. It's not simple to do, but it's that simple to identify. Like accomplishing that is not always easy, but it's like, A&M, I just wasn't in love with their run scheme in recent years. It just was kind of boring and just like you'd expect of a guy that wants to throw the ball over the field. And what's so weird is I felt Kellen Mon was completely wasted for four years of Texas A&M. He would have done so much better under Colin Klein running this offense now. Like he would have been a really good fit in this offense because he would have actually used them like a dual threat quarterback, which is what Kellen Mon should have been. So again, I love the hire, personnel wise, it's going to need some time in my opinion to get going, but I do think there's some parts to work with. I just think it's going to take a little bit of time. The big question for me is, I don't know if Connor Wegman is necessarily the ideal fit for what he ideally wants to do offensively. What he's going to have to do is take the quarterback and then you're going to have to adapt what you do to a degree to fit him. That's going to be a key for Colin Klein. And I think he did a decent job of that with Will Howard last year because Will Howard's not like Adrian Martinez, he's not like that dual threat quarterback that they, that I believe he wants. He's not like what Colin Klein was as a quarterback and it's because Colin Klein was a guy that over a thousand yards rushing in 2011 and 27 touchdowns, like that's what Colin Klein did is run the football. But he doesn't have that, you know, I mean, in his tenure at Kansas State, he had a thousand yard quarterback and they had a thousand yard quarterback in 2016 before he got there. The next year they had three quarterbacks that all played at different times that gained over a thousand yards combined at quarterback. Your next year, you had over 600 yards rushing at quarterback. The next year you had see 400, you had about 500 yards rushing a quarterback. The next year you had only about 400 yards rushing a quarterback with Will Howard and Skyler Thompson. The next year at running back, you hardly ran a ball at all with Will Howard and Skyler Thompson. 2022, you bring an Adrian Martinez, he runs for over 600 yards and 10 touchdowns, run games a lot more a part of what you do. Last year with Will Howard and David Johnson, over 600 combined yards of quarterback. So you saw where he wanted to go with this thing, right? It's what he had early and what he had at the end. He wants to have quarterbacks can make plays with their legs. Now the thing, if you look in the futures, there's a couple guys like that on the roster. I think the Henderson kid is there. I think Marcel Reed, who's a, is he true freshman or red or freshman? But he's another kid that, that I believe runs, fits that offense very well. So here's the interesting thing. If, if Connor Wegman struggles for any kind of period of time this year, I won't be shocked if they start thinking about, do we start working in another quarterback to help, help the run game get going? Not saying benching Connor Wegman, but sort of like what they did with Will Howard last year, and Avery Johnson, which is let's, you know, what Notre Dame did with Tyler Buckner in 2021. Let's give the defense something else to worry about as a wrinkle that they have to prepare for, which makes us a little bit more difficult to prepare for. I'm very curious, or do they just start with that? Do they just kind of go with that right away? Do they have a quarterback like that? That's going to be a very interesting aspect to, to how this offense evolves in years one and two under, under Colin Klein. I agree. I think the transition period, like it is for any new coach, new coordinator coming in there, there's going to be your bumps and bruises that come along with it. But again, that's why I say I think a lot of that is key to how the offensive line plays. I know that Colin Klein is going to get very creative with how to create running lanes. And he also hasn't had an offensive line that's been this big across the board, which I'm going to be interested to see how he uses. But if I'm scouting Texas A&M, which I've been doing the last week and a half, I'm not worried about Connor Wegman beating me for a 30 yard backside pole, up the field. So if you are struggling to run the football between the tackles, I think you do take a look at that. And I think that's something that you evaluate as the season goes on. Connor Wegman can hurt you if you don't play discipline football. All right. That's what we were talking about earlier. He's not a guy that like Riley Leonard's going to go out there and just have to make plays with his legs. Sean Davis and I were talking about this yesterday, like he's just going to have to make plays with his legs. You're not asking, you're not requiring Connor Wegman to do that. It's more of a, if you don't respect the backside, I'm pulling the sucker and I'm taking out the back door for a touchdown, like, like, again, like, well, Howard did last year. It's not put a team on your shoulders and go make a bunch of plays with your legs. So it'll be interesting how that evolves. That's going to wrap up the offensive portion of the show. We're going to get to the defensive portion next. And that's obviously going to be Mike Elko's bread and butter as we kind of wrap up this preview of Texas A&M and Notre Dame, we'll have more tomorrow. I'll dive into some more specific matchup aspects of the game tomorrow in the show. Trevor's going to have some more specific matchup versus matchup type articles coming out tomorrow at Irish Breakdown.com, so you're definitely going to check that out. He's, he's, let me try to get us out, right, Trevor, you've dove into the film. You've looked at the numbers and there's some very intriguing matchups on both sides of the ball that he's going to write about tomorrow. I'll dive into some of that stuff from my perspective during the show tomorrow. And then of course, we'll get into keys to Victor on Saturday. So definitely going to want to check that out, but we're going to do defense next, but before we do folks hit that like, hit that subscribe, hit the notification bell, share this podcast, give us a five star review. And if you've not done so already, sign up for the message board at boards. Irish Breakdown.com. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC]
