Three Thoughts -Notre Dame at Texas A&M

The season begins with a battle of ranked teams in a pulsating environment Saturday

Three Thoughts is back as our signature way to summarize a noteworthy game we want to cover during the 2024 college football season at #Sturmstack. We plan on grabbing about one game per weekend – usually featuring Texas or Texas A&M – and bringing our notebook to see what jumps out at us in a brief recap that we do in memory of the man who did this first before his untimely demise, the late Grant Wahl…

Notre Dame grabbed the 4th Quarter by the scruff of the neck and was able to win a difficult and physical road game in which they entered as a curious underdog, 23-13, over Texas A&M. For the Aggies, it was the debut performance from new Head Coach Mike Elko in an era where they try to move on after three disappointing seasons in a row. Saturday Night showed how difficult a task that could turn out to be.

These are My Three Thoughts:

– It was all too tough an ask of Texas A&M and despite nobody wanting to admit that going in, looking back at how the game went seemed to reveal the truth.

What I mean by this is that you could tell how tight the Aggies were early and when their execution faltered, the screws were turned tighter by the team that was more experienced in this setting. They, Notre Dame, who spend their entire existence being a targeted foe and a huge game for whoever they play, were not with coming to Texas, playing in front of a cranking and hostile setting, being featured on GameDay, being on prime time, and facing a ranked opponent. They do that stuff about a half dozen times a year and some of their upperclassman surely just consider it what they do.

But, for A&M, they have a young QB who had never played in a game like that or in a setting like that or for those stakes and under a head coach who had never felt like everything was on his plate quite like that. Weigman is just so raw and Elko and Colin Klein were unable to make things easy for him. Sure, that all sounds like a list of excuses, but I would twist that and say it is just the realities of a new coach and a young, injured QB being thrust into a spot that was probably a bridge too far for Game No. 1 in 2024 and a date in August.

Now, if this was a Week 2 game and you could play McNeese State first, does it change the situation substantially? I don’t think it is appropriate to argue that was the difference between winning and losing that game, but there were spots on Saturday Night where the team appeared able to go toe-to-toe with the Irish but at the QB position, in particular, he seemed in his own head from a very point in the game. In fact, it was probably at the end of the first drive where A&M had marched the entire length of the field, but turned a 2nd and 3 into a field goal because Weigman could not hit two different short passes that each probably continue the drive. The 3rd and 3 to EJ Smith was a great read with a blitz in his face, but he missed Smith and from then on, he appeared to be aiming the ball and not just ripping it. By the time he had thrown two different bad early-down 2nd Quarter interceptions, his confidence was completely shot. When you combine that with a running game that never took control and now a passing game where the blitz is spooking your QB, your play-sheet becomes very, very tiny.