Some of my best friends are Aggies. Two of them stood at my wedding. One was my best man. Since I never “properly” dunked my Notre Dame class ring at the Dixie Chicken, one of their favorite games was and still is trying to find a way to steal it and drop it into the bottom of a beverage.

During my wedding reception, they even got our photographer to play along, taking my wedding and class rings for pictures for a very extended period of time. It wasn’t until the end my of best man’s speech that I received it back in the bottom of a pint of Miller Lite. With the Aggie War Hymn playing in the background, I chugged the beer in the midst of multiple whoops from all Aggies in attendance to retrieve them, giving whoop of my own at the end. It’s one of my favorite stories from my wedding day.

August 31, 2024 was the first of only two dates that I ever planned to cheer against those boys that show the real old fight, much less in their own house.

As we enter 2018, I’m considering an earlier start and getting a few years of practice in hoping for the failure of the Jimbo Fisher era.

It isn’t simply because the Aggies sniped Mike Elko from Notre Dame either. The Jimbo hire already had me rather nervous about the direction of their program. Guaranteeing $75 million over a decade is flat-out insane. Oh sure, he won a national title, but did so at a traditional powerhouse largely in part to turning a blind eye toward Jameis Winston.

I was at that title game and witnessed the end of what was an insane miracle of an Auburn season that included the kick six. I had no words for my sister who just watched her school come seconds away from winning the title. Then Jimbo gave me a gut-wrenching last-second moment of failure of my own as the Irish saw a game winning touchdown erased by a horrendous offensive pass interference.

That’s a lot of words to say I really, really don’t like Jimbo and why I wasn’t jumping for joy when Texas A&M made their $75 million gamble. With the signing of Elko, currently reported at three years, starting at $1.8 million, but likely to average closer to $2 million, puts the Aggies at $80+ million in the next decade for just two people, one of whom will get paid regardless if he wins a single game.

A school whose fight song centers around knocking Texas off their high horse has become the embodiment of every message board poster that wonders why their school doesn’t just “back up the Brink’s truck”, hire their dream candidates, and just watch the wins roll in. Easy right? If you’re nodding in agreement, just remember that a school just to the north of Notre Dame will enter year four of this very same experiment. Michigan has only a single win against an opponent over .500 this season to show for it (thanks to Purdue winning their bowl game), eight passing touchdowns, and is currently hanging their hopes on a Mississippi QB transfer because the sleepover recruiting specialist of a head coach apparently can’t recruit or develop one on his own.

Anyways, once I saw the reported details of the Elko contract, I had myself a little Twitter outburst:

Further real talk: you might want to brace yourself as a fan if you think ND goes all-in on crazy football money.

— Ryan Ritter (@ndtex) January 4, 2018

This was based on what we’d seen, or perhaps more accurately perceived, as Irish fans in the past. Notre Dame appeared continuously stuck in a never-ending game of catch-up to the assistant coach market value far too often. While no Irish fan using logic would want money thrown in a stupid fashion just to absolutely ensure a coach will stay (see: Weis, Charlie), it always appears as if Notre Dame tried to play a game no one else was and not fully commit that they would be a major financial player.

Little did I know at the time, the Irish played ball with Elko:

Also per source, there was no philosophical/personality rift between Elko and Brian Kelly. So we can probably put that to rest.

— Mike Vorel (@mikevorel) January 5, 2018

As the South Bend Tribune article pointed out, the $1.5 million number would have put Elko behind only Clemson DC, Brent Venables, and LSU DC, Dave Aranda, who said no to the Aggies by singing a record-breaking four year, $10 million contract. Not only that, the verbal agreement came after Texas A&M already tried to court Elko, prompting what would have been a Notre Dame record raise for an assistant coach. Putting Elko in that kind of rarefied monetary air is absolutely a sign that Notre Dame is willing to participate in this crazy arms race and rather aggressively.

Or to put it another way, the Aggies found themselves out-bid not once, but twice. After the Aranda spurn, they went back to the Elko well with a couple more money bags. While I’ve seen a handful of “it’s only $300k” comments in the wake of this, that’s not an insignificant amount (a near 20% increase), plus that amount will make Elko the second-highest paid defensive coordinator in the nation, behind Aranda.

No disrespect to Elko, but both Aranda and Venables are far more battle-tested and proven commodities. Notre Dame putting that same kind of faith into Elko and pushing him closer towards Aranda’s record-breaking number and past Venables’ contract is a rather large ask after just one season in South Bend.

And I don’t begrudge Elko one bit either. I love my current company and the people I work with and for. If someone comes with anything sniffing a 20% compensation increase, I’m gone. If I got that 20% increase after my current employer already significantly bumped my pay, I wouldn’t expect a match at that point. Even if I did, I would 100% assume I’m the first on the chopping block if shit goes south. At the end of the day, this is his career and its a business decision.

Does it suck for the kids that early signed just a couple weeks ago? Absolutely, but that’s been the game for years. Unless the NCAA regulates some kind of periods in which coaches can or can’t jump ship, that will forever be the case.

The hiring of Elko showed me that Brian Kelly can step out of his comfort zone and find great talent. The departure of Elko showed me that Notre Dame is willing to put an aggressively fair offer in front of said talent. The Irish aren’t in the best spot in the world

Oh, and as far as those dear old Texas Aggies go…

The post Love and War in Texas: Mike Elko Departs appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Through the magic of podcasting time travel, Eddie and I are able to chat about the earth-shattering development that rocked Notre Dame fans by recording later after the news broke.

So…yeah, this episode is a little interesting and this is all either the result of Brian Kelly’s halftime blood sacrifice to win the Citrus Bowl, an attempt to divide by zero, or the end result of having two SEC teams in the title game.

The post HLS Podcast – SEC: Swiping Elko and Championships appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

South Bend Tribune Photo/ROBERT FRANKLIN

Spring football is often a time for acclimating young players to the intricacies of a division I playbook. It’s also a good time to emphasize and tweak countless position-specific techniques. New defensive coordinator, Mike Elko, has chosen to allocate a chunk of spring ball to teaching some of the fundamentals. To be more specific – teaching proper tackling.

Missed Tackles

According to College Football Film Room, the Irish missed a total of 106 tackles in 2016 and 112 tackles in 2015. These numbers equate to almost 9 missed tackles per game. Thinking back to last year, far too often the Irish defense was on the wrong end of a potential game changing defensive stop due to a missed tackle. The Brian VanGorder experiment was proof that a defense built on a foundation of scheme will always crumble. Furthermore, the idea of reverse engineering a defense by emphasizing scheme over fundamentals was a critical miscalculation. Fundamental tackling is at the bedrock of all great defenses.

Breaking Down Tackling Drill Highlights

The kind folks at 247 Sports shared a video of a live tackling drill featuring the defensive backs and wide receivers. Jump ahead to minute mark 1:38 for some actual pad popping fun.

• Rep #1: Devin Studstill lays a solid initial hit on Miles Boykin without leaving his feet awarding a quick whistle from the coaches.
• Rep #2: Nicco Fertitta (personal disclosure: he is quickly becoming my favorite player) breaks down at the point of contact and delivers a textbook tackle with his head correctly on the outer shoulder of Keenan Centlivre. Fertitta is by far one of the best tacklers on the team, and also capable of bringing the boom. Sadly, I must remind you that he will miss the first half of the Temple game due to a bogus targeting call on one of the best CFB hits of the 2016 season (language on the video NSFW).
• Rep #3: Spencer Perry executes a fundamental tackle on Austin Webster. Again, important to note that Perry did not leave his feet and has his head correctly on the outside shoulder of the ballcarrier.
• Rep #4: Captain Drue Tranquil breaks down and utilizes his size to overpower the ever elusive walk-on Chris Finke.
• Rep #5: Spencer Perry breaks down nicely when approaching Kevin Stepherson, but pausing the video at 1:58 shows he commits the cardinal sin of lowering his head, thus rendering him unable to “see what you hit” as the saying goes. This enables the long and talented Stepherson to shrug off the feeble tackle attempt.
• Rep #6: Isaiah Robertson goes low on Mick Assaf and shows good drive with his legs while wrapping up the legs of the ballcarrier. Good work from the early enrollee.
• Rep #7: Donte Vaughn brings down Arion Shinaver in fundamental fashion. Additional promising results from neglecting to lunge and leave his feet.
• Rep #8: Equanimeous St. Brown brushes past a tentative Jimmy Thompson. Thompson engages  St. Brown too high initially and is unable to recover against the more athletic wide receiver.
• Rep #9: DJ Morgan hesitates slightly against Miles Boykin, but is able to wrap up the bigger wide receiver. If you listen closely, you can hear a coach holler, “Don’t stop!”.
• Rep #10: I’m confident that the video captions are incorrect on this one. I highly doubt Brandon Wimbush is participating in live tackling drills. I believe the ball carrier is Chase Claypool, who puts a  shake-and-bake on the would be tackler (I’m guessing it’s Devin Studstill). Studstill commits multiple fatal flaws in lowering his head and leaving his feet. This single rep alone accentuates the fact that live tackling drills need to be performed early and often throughout spring practice.
• Rep #11: Another caption blunder – I’m thinking this is #7 Nick Watkins on defense and Chris Finke carrying the ball. Watkins fails to get his head on the outside shoulder of Finke forcing him to lunge with an unsuccessful arm tackle.
• Rep #12: Julian Love makes the same mistake as Watkins, but is fortunate enough to wrap up his arm tackle on Keenan Centlivre.
• Rep #13: Troy Pride Jr. breaks down too early and gets caught flat footed against Chris Finke, and all it takes is one jab step by Finke to fly by Pride.
• Rep #14: A jersey number 38 showdown of Deon McIntosh and Chris Schilling provides some fireworks with McIntosh opting not to get fancy, but instead lay some lumber as the ballcarrier and smash through Schilling. It will be interesting to see where McIntosh ends up on the depth chart as a high ceiling, versatile, and apparently quite powerful athlete.
• Rep #15: Kevin Stepherson claims another victim in a flatfooted Jalen Elliot.
• Rep #16: In a rematch with Stepherson, Elliot redeems himself by successfully bringing down the ballcarrier in fundamental fashion.
• Rep #17: Equanimeous St. Brown continues his success in the drill – this time against a visibly frustrated Drue Tranquil.
• Rep #18: Nick Coleman, new to the safety position, brings down the much bigger Miles Boykin. Coleman aggressively attacks Boykin’s hips and eventually trips up Boykin proving that the low man usually wins.
• Rep #19: Ashton White’s hesitation allows Chase Claypool to beat him to the the center (red colored) line forcing White to grasp for jersey as Claypool cruises by.
• Rep #20: Nicco Fertitta against Arion Shinaver – “That was textbook” says Coach Lyght…enough said.
• Rep #21: Brian Ball is no match for the more athletic and incredibly intriguing Alize Jones. Brian Kelly commented that Jones is virtually uncover-able in certain areas of the field. Translation – return of the jump ball fade pass in the corner of the end zone.
• Rep #22: Mick Assaf tries to take advantage of the passive technique of Isaiah Robertson, but Robertson again opts to go very low and takes out the legs of Assaf. Robertson will likely need to be more aggressive in the future to take down more elusive and athletic ballcarriers.
• Rep #23: Spencer Perry lacks the proper leg drive to take down Keenan Centlivre.
• Rep #24: Chris Finke does “slippery fox” things and leaves DJ Morgan with his jock in his hand. Against Finke and other agile ballcarriers, Irish defenders need to be as aggressive as possible while not overcommitting and leaving themselves susceptible to a stutter step.
• Rep #25: Deon McIntosh makes an early cut and lowers his shoulder against Devin Studstill who makes great first contact, but McIntosh’s impressive leg drive is able to power through another quick whistle.

Overall the tackling drills are obviously needed and welcomed. From the short, yet revealing, video it is apparent that the Irish defense needs to continue to hammer home fundamental tackling. This includes not leaving your feet, seeing what you hit, being aggressive yet under control, and wrapping up after the initial hit. Hopefully, we get to see another video of similar tackling drills displaying many improvements before spring ball is over. Thanks again to Tom Loy of 247 Sports for sharing the video.

Cheers and Go Irish!

The post Spring Ball Miracle – Tackling Becomes A Priority appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.