Texas A&m And Mike Elko Are Trying To 'fix It' After An 0-2 Start In Sec And Arkansas Next

Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko told his reeling team Monday that there's only one thing to do as the group enters October with an 0-2 record in SEC play.

"When you're in a position where you're facing adversity, where things aren't going the way that you hoped, the only thing you can do is come together and work," Elko said. "That's the only option you have. You've got to commit to a process that's going to allow the results to change somehow, some way."

Elko hadn't lost a game in September as the Aggies head coach - the 2024 season-opening loss against Notre Dame took place in August - before dropping the last two games to Kentucky and LSU. The two defeats have plummeted Texas A&M from a top-10 ranking to out of the top 25 altogether. 

In fact, the Aggies received zero votes total from AP voters this week.

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"When you get in a rut and you have consistent failure, it doesn't show that you're trying to do things to fix it," Elko said. "We are actively trying to do things to fix it. We've got to continue to do it better."

After two non-conference wins to start the year, Texas A&M first fell in its SEC opener at home to Kentucky. The Wildcats scored 21 straight in the third quarter to take a tie game into a three-score advantage that the Aggies were never able to fully make up.

The LSU loss was a beatdown. The Tigers moved the football up and down the field to the tune of 506 total yards while the Aggies couldn't crack 200. Texas A&M also finished 4 of 15 on third down.

While the level of play hasn't been where it needs to be, Elko said the problems aren't ones surrounding effort.

"There's a lot of cliches that go into struggles, and one of them is always ‘they're not trying' or ‘they're not putting everything they have into it,' and I just think those are, in a lot of ways, cliches," Elko said. "At the end of the day, we're not getting results, and we're all in this business to get results. That's what we have to do."

Marcel Reed's struggles at quarterback have garnered headlines and social media buzz but the downturn hasn't been the result of just one player. The team hasn't played complementary football like it did last year when the Aggies went 11-2 and made the College Football Playoff, Elko noted. Whenever one side of the ball was struggling in 2025, the other unit would be able to create energy or momentum to elevate their teammates. That hasn't been the case this year.

Saturday presents a great opportunity to steady the ship with rival Arkansas coming to College Station for a primetime kick on ESPN2. The Razorbacks have had arguably an even worse start to the season than the Aggies. Arkansas, in its first season under new head coach Ryan Silverfield, is also 2-2 but both its losses came in blowouts to Utah and Georgia. 

The team also entered the season ranked at the bottom of the SEC media's predicted standings. The Razorbacks last won a conference game on Oct. 26, 2024 against Mississippi State.

It's a game Texas A&M, even after the past two weeks, is expected to win. As of Monday afternoon, DraftKings has the Aggies as two-touchdown favorites while FanDuel has Texas A&M as 14½-point favorites.

"We have a team that showed up on time for the team meeting this morning, wanting to figure out what it's going to take to fix this thing, change this thing and move it in a different direction," Elko said. "We have to go do it."

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This article originally published at Texas A&M and Mike Elko are trying to 'fix it' after an 0-2 start in SEC and Arkansas next.