{"id":214126,"date":"2025-09-10T00:07:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T00:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/214126\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T00:07:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T00:07:11","slug":"texas-am-looks-to-clear-key-hurdle-vs-notre-dame-join-college-footballs-upper-echelon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/214126\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas A&M looks to clear key hurdle vs. Notre Dame, join college football\u2019s upper echelon"},"content":{"rendered":"

The good news, Texas A&M<\/a> head coach Mike Elko said Monday, is that the Aggies cleared their historic road woes hurdle last season when they beat Florida and Mississippi State in conference play. <\/p>\n

The bad \u2014 or, let\u2019s call it, more challenging news \u2014 is that the next hurdle the Aggies need to vault over to take their next step as a program does not include a Bulldogs team that went winless in Southeastern Conference play or a Gators team whose coach\u2019s name appears next to the word \u201cbuyout\u201d when you type it into the Google search bar. <\/p>\n

The 16th-ranked Aggies, if they hope to join the upper echelon of college football\u2019s contenders, will one day soon need to topple a ranked program while on the road. Saturday, against No. 8 Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind.,<\/a> represents their first of four opportunities to do so this season. <\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\"Texas<\/p>\n

Sports Roundup<\/p>\n

Get the latest D-FW sports news, analysis and opinion delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, Kevin Sherrington’s A La Carte.<\/p>\n

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Texas A&M has not beaten a ranked team on the road since it upset Auburn, then the No. 3 team in the country, at Jordan-Hare Stadium on Nov. 8, 2014. They\u2019ve lost 13 straight since and are the only Southeastern Conference team without a ranked road win in that span. <\/p>\n

Texas A&M beat the Gators and Bulldogs last season to snap an 0 for 10 drought away from Kyle Field\u2019s friendly confines that dated back to the 2021 season. They still lost at Auburn and at South Carolina, though, and haven\u2019t won more than two road games in a single season since the COVID-19 impacted 2020 campaign. The Aggies have three more road games this season against teams currently ranked in No. 3 LSU (Oct. 25), No. 25 Missouri (Nov. 8) and No. 7 Texas<\/a> (Nov. 28). <\/p>\n

\u201cNow we\u2019ve got to get over the \u2018winning at night on the road against a top-10 team\u2019 [obstacle,]\u201d Elko said. \u201cThat\u2019s the next hurdle for us to clear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Notre Dame Stadium, which houses north of 80,000 spectators, is not necessarily impenetrable. The Irish lost to Northern Illinois at home last year, Ohio State two years ago and two teams \u2014 unranked Marshall and Stanford \u2014 the season before that. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if it plays different,\u201d Elko, who was Notre Dame\u2019s defensive coordinator in 2017, said of Notre Dame Stadium, \u201cbut the thing I\u2019ve always said to people about Notre Dame is you can just feel the history and tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\"Best<\/p>\n

History suggests that Texas A&M needs to beat Notre Dame \u2014 or, at least, one of the three ranked teams that it\u2019s scheduled to play on the road later this season \u2014 to solidify its case as a legitimate playoff contender. The dozen teams that comprised last year\u2019s College Football Playoff field combined to go 43-7 on the road and 8-4 on the road against ranked teams. Half of the bracket had at least one ranked road win and the only two teams with a sub-.500 record in those games (Indiana and Boise State) were eliminated in the first round. <\/p>\n

Notre Dame, which lost to Ohio State in the title game, had only one ranked road win last season. The Irish stormed into Kyle Field Week 1<\/a>, flummoxed then-starter Conner Weigman and held the Aggies to just 3.8 yards per carry in a 23-13 win. <\/p>\n

Sophomore Marcel Reed<\/a>, who passed for seven touchdowns and zero interceptions in Texas A&M\u2019s first two wins, provides a dual-threat wrinkle that Weigman didn\u2019t last season and that Notre Dame didn\u2019t see in its Week 1 loss to Miami and former Georgia quarterback Carson Beck. Elko said Monday that Reed, who exited Saturday\u2019s win vs. Utah State with an injury, is good to play this weekend. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think they\u2019re pretty well-entrenched in who they are and what they do,\u201d Elko said. \u201cWe\u2019re pretty well entrenched in who we are and what we do. And so that\u2019s always an exciting chess match when you go into a game like that and you know the other team.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Texas<\/a>Who is Marcel Reed? Five things to know about Texas A&M\u2019s starting quarterback<\/a><\/p>\n

If A&M wants to grab a College Football Playoff berth, Reed will need to cement his status as one of college football\u2019s top QBs.<\/p>\n

\"Texas<\/a>Takeaways from Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko\u2019s presser ahead of matchup vs. Notre Dame<\/a><\/p>\n

Mike Elko discusses the Aggies Week 3 matchup with the Fighting Irish, and how much is at stake in South Bend<\/p>\n

Find more Texas A&M coverage from <\/b>The Dallas Morning News<\/b> here<\/b><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The good news, Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko said Monday, is that the Aggies cleared their historic…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":214127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[347,10857,1318,1317,1315,1316,62,13877,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-214126","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-article","9":"tag-colleges","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-football","13":"tag-ncaafootball","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-texas-am-aggies","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115177091715850373","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}