Texas A&M Aggies Head Coach Talks Offseason, Building Team Chemistry

The Texas A&M Aggies are working their way through fall camp and getting ready to begin a new era when they take on Notre Dame on August 31 .

New head coach Mike Elko was tasked this offseason with getting the most out of a roster that over the last several years has had as much talent as anyone, but obviously has fallen well short of expectations .

In order to do that, the team will have to have significantly more cohesion than they've played with in recent seasons. Elko was asked on Tuesday about how he has created more chemistry within the locker room this offseason and gave an insight as to what his process has been.

"It goes back to how you have to go through your offseason. I think you have to be much more intentional nowadays about how you bring people together within your program. That's something that is just something that's really important," Elko said, citing an example of having his offensive line coach spend time with players he may not coach directly. "In the past, in the summer, we would say hey, [ offensive line coach Adam Cushing ], why don't you bring the offensive line over to your house? But really now it's more like, hey Coach Cushing , why don't you grab a defensive coach that you haven't spent much time with? Why don't you grab 12 kids across a whole bunch of different positions and bring them together because those 12 kids haven't spent a bunch of time with. You do it a little bit differently. We did a couple of things event-wise this summer that I thought were good getting the kids together. We'll probably do a couple more here during camp. We're doing some stuff in our team meetings at night to try to get some kids up and let them talk about their story and tell their history and who they are. I think you have to be very intentional about those things and understand that you have a lot of people in that locker room that have never played together. You've got to form that before we run out of the tunnel for the first time."

By the sounds of it, Elko has changed his philosophy on chemistry over the years and will continue to change things as he evolves as a head coach.