COLLEGE STATION – Texas A&M safety Marcus Ratcliffe stood at the lectern Saturday still dressed in his maroon uniform when he said six words that revealed what he thought about the days leading into the 31-21 upset loss to Kentucky.
“We had a really loose week,” Ratcliffe said.
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What does that mean?
“I just think in practice things were loose,” the senior captain later elaborated. “We weren’t really keyed in on the small details of football, so I think that’s what I mean by loose.”
That loose week sank the Aggie ship at Kyle Field. Kentucky outplayed Texas A&M in every facet of the game, so much so that head coach Mike Elko said postgame that there were no positives to take from the game.
Elko, back in front of the media Monday after rewatching the loss numerous times on film, said he thought the previous week was “loose” because the team never got comfortable with what the coaches were trying to implement.
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“As the week went on, we were tweaking and trying to get our kids into a spot where they were comfortable with what we were trying to do. Honestly, I don’t know that we ever felt great, and obviously that showed Saturday,” Elko said. “That was probably one of the worst defensive performances we’ve had in my tenure here.”
It was definitely a game to forget for the defense.
Kenny Minchey was an efficient 14 of 18 for 252 yards and two touchdowns through the air as he operated the Kentucky offense with efficiency. He completed every pass over the final 34 minutes of the game, picking the right receiver nearly every time.
CJ Baxter, the former Texas running back, scampered for 87 yards on 19 carries with two touchdowns. The receiving core had 154 yards after the catch as the Texas A&M defense got caught out of position multiple times.
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“I don’t think it was loose in the sense of like people not trying or people not trying to figure it out,” Elko said. “I think it was loose in the sense that we weren’t able to hit it the way we wanted to or the way we usually do, and so we got to go back to the drawing board.”
Both Ratcliffe and Elko said the Texas A&M defense got beat badly with their eyes against the Wildcats offense.
Elko said improvements in that regard can be made in film study, walkthrough or practice.
The Aggies will need to make some improvements soon as they have less than a week before heading east along the Gulf to rival LSU for a night game against Lane Kiffin, Sam Leavitt and the 10th-ranked Tigers.
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“You spend so much time going against your own offense, and then every offense has a different layer, a different multiplicity to it that creates stress and dilemmas,” Elko said. “I think you see it across the country early in the year that defenses are a little bit behind. That’s not meant to be an excuse. But I do think there’s a little bit to that, and so we’ve got to catch up. We’ve got to catch up quick.”
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This article originally published at Why did A&M have its ‘worst defensive performance’ in loss to Kentucky. A ‘loose week’ of prep.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com
