Next final section of today's show, Trevor, is going to talk about the Notre Dame,

or the Texas A&M defense going to talk about the Notre Dame, or the

Texas A&M defense and what it presents to Notre Dame because Notre Dame's defense is going to be

key to them and then Texas A&M defense is going to be key to them. If one of these two defenses

doesn't play well, that team is in trouble. It is absolutely in trouble. And of course, you look at

the A&M defense, and that's Mike Elko's baby. That's his bread and butter. You talked earlier

about how he's improved places everywhere he's been, and so you look at some numbers, and you look

at scoring defense, for example, and prior to Mike Elko taking over, well, let's

look at Notre Dame first. In 2016, Notre Dame ranked 61st in the country in scoring defense,

and in year one of Mike Elko's tenure, they jump all the way up to 31. That's an 18 point,

or a 30 spot improvement. During that 2017 season, Texas A&M had the number

3887 scoring defense in the country. They give up 30.7 points per game. In year one of Mike

Elko's tenure, they jump all the way up to 47, drop five points off that per game average.

And then the next year, they jump up to 36 all the way up to 22 and a half points per game.

In 2020, they jump up to 29th.

In 2021, they jump up to three.

So there was just steady improvement year after year after year from Mike Elko being there. The year after he leaves,

they dropped down to 25. And then last year, they were 36th. There's a little bit of a trend,

pretty steady trend that looks just like this pre and post Mike Elko when it comes to scoring

defense. And it's not like they replaced him with a bum. They hired DJ Durkin. He was a solid defensive coordinator, in my opinion. So he certainly has done that.

You look at what they did at Duke during his tenure as well. Trevor, it's the same story. In

2021, the year before Mike Elko arrived at Duke, they ranked 127th in scoring defense.

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