A 'toolbox team': Pate highlights A&M's ability to win in multiple ways

Key notes from Josh Pate interview

• You are in the second year with Mike Elko, a head coach you trust. That is baked into your subconscious. The key part is that I have seen A&M win two very drastically different games: A shootout and a couple of slugfests. The history of college football has taught you that when you get into November — in the deep end, when you are forced to swim — the teams that thrive are toolbox teams. The kind of team that, no matter what problem presents itself, opens up the toolbox and they’ve got an answer for it. Miami feels this way to me. A&M, too. Teams that can win in several different ways.
   
• I don’t think your eyes are lying to you when you watch the caliber of athlete on the field. You kind of know what you have when the season gets here. You can watch the rest of the teams, and realize my guys look as good, better or even inferior. Your guys are not inferior. They look better. You’ve seen Marcel Reed take the next step as a passer. You don’t take that for granted because you’ve watched Clemson and Penn State play this year. You know it cannot only be stagnant, but it can go the opposite direction.
   
• You have seen really aggressive portal moves pay off. A&M said, “We need difference makers in the wide receiver room? Let’s go get them.” Now they are watching KC Concepcion and Mario Craver do what they do. Not to mention the guys they recruited there. A&M is just a really good team. Last year, in the back of my mind, you may have been thinking, “I like where we are, but it is going to take this, this and this.” They are not a perfect product, but no one is. As long as they keep progressing standardly, adding stacks and adding a pancake per week. Then you like what you have on your plate.
   
• In 2025, if we asked each other at SEC Media Days, most people said there would be no undefeated teams this year. I don’t think many A&M fans said 12-0 this year. I bring that up because there could be a loss around the corner. It is not a cause to freak out. What you are looking for is whether someone dominated you or if you lost because of controllables.
   
• A&M has been highly penalized. They haven’t had to pay for that in the form of a loss this year. Maybe they do down the road. Maybe that is what it takes to get the players' attention. Sometimes you have to lose to correct things. If the loss does come, does someone run the ball 300 yards on you? Does someone just stone you, and you can’t move the ball to save your life? Or is it some stuff we control that got in the way? We lost, lesson learned, and we will apply it moving forward. It is not supposed to be easy or clean.
   
• You are not going through the schedule unscathed. I am looking at A&M. If you lose, did you lose because of things that are correctable? Did you lose because you did not put in the effort? Or did you really play your game, and it wasn’t good enough? I am not sure I see A&M losing a game this year, and saying they did everything they could and the other team is just better.
   
• Illinois lines up against Ohio State on Saturday. If Illinois does not control its destiny in that game, Ohio State does. They control the destiny of both.
   
• Florida, at their best, is a much better team than Auburn. At their best, they can be a top team in the country. They have not been at their best. Even last week, I would say there is a level up that they can hit. I expected them to beat Texas, so I got what I expected out of the bye week.
   
• The reward for Billy Napier is to see if he can do it on the road. Florida does not have poor personnel. They’ve got a plenty good enough offensive line. A tailback that was averaging over five yards per carry, they just weren’t using him. After the bye, they ran the dude 27 times, and it opened up the deep ball. DJ Lagway equaled his passes of over 50 yards in this game, which was as many as he did all season. That was just two. It is not like he lit them up all afternoon. If you are hanging 29 up, that ought to be good enough to win. Since you’ve seen them do it once this year, the question becomes, “Is there consistency there?”
   
• I’d expect a war on Saturday. I would expect a top-10 caliber performance. At its best, Florida can be a pitcher who is all over the place, but at any given point, they can throw 99 down and away and make you look foolish. If they don’t bring it, you win 38-10. But it's best to be ready for it.
   
• You just have to live with that. I don’t want to set myself up for Lagway to be Superman. I am not expecting A&M to blow them out. If I do, I do. But Lagway, by this time in the season, I should know what I have. You should not be in a cloud of mystery this deep into the season. They don’t need Lagway to run the ball all over the place to win games. It is a luxury. He has a good arm and a good ground game, so they should be able to compete in any game. His athletic profile will be limited.
   
• I anointed Lagway as the No. 1 quarterback in the country. I regret that, but with Lagway coming in the second half of last year, he was a starter for half a year. He has the injury and does not get to work out in the winter or play in spring ball. He has not played a lot of football. So, this point in the year, he finally hits the reps he would have gotten in the spring. Having gone through summer workouts. Fall game week reps are different than the offseason. The injury has hampered him this season. But it doesn’t mean they can’t come out on fire this Saturday.
   
• I look at teams like Texas differently. If it's Tulsa or Memphis, you should have a disadvantage at the line of scrimmage. Texas should not ever have that. They did not attack the portal at the offensive line. They were comfortable with what they had. The way I look at it, you have a loaded position group, like a sponge, then you squeeze it and water comes out. But now, you have to squeeze the sponge a lot harder to get the water out. We are going to have to do the work.
   
• When you don’t have the threat at quarterback that you thought you had, it bottles things up, and it makes it tough. Texas struggled against Ohio State. Those next few games were the time to figure it out. Now you are in conference play, and it does not look like they have figured it out yet. In that do-or-die game is the Red River Shootout. I don’t know how it will happen, but I expect an inspired performance by Texas. That is a prideful team and coaching staff. They won’t go down without a fight. I see that with Auburn this week. I saw that with Florida last week.
   
• I have not heard anyone describe the Alabama-Vanderbilt game as anything other than a really good high-level football game. I have not heard anyone talk about how misleading the result was. Alabama may have tacked on a score at the end of the game to make it look more comfortable than it was. If you showed me the first quarter of that game, I’d know how it is going to go. They busted a long run early.
   
• My fear for Alabama would have been that if they don’t have answers early, they may not have the answers. They did have the answers, though. They clamped down. They finished the game on a 30-7 run after the first. They shut them out in the second half. They had forced turnovers. That is an opportunistic defense.
   
• Alabama folks were uncomfortable with it because they always had suffocating defenses. That is not the way it was going to happen there or anywhere now. Suppose there is a little bending, but not breaking. Maybe it comes down to how many points the other team scored? There were moments against Georgia where Alabama’s defense looked exposed. But then you look up and Georgia is struggling to hit 20 in Athens. Now, Alabama gets Eli Drinkwitz off a bye.
   
• I would say the Kansas City Chiefs are the dynasty for me. The climate existed in the past, where it was a funnel. Alabama was at the bottom of it. The sport is still tilted towards 10-15 programs. It’s just the landscape leveled out more. Watch Georgia right now. They have starting linemen elsewhere. Those used to be the guys coming off the bench. Those guys don’t exist anymore. Rosters are way thinner for the top teams, and we are adding a ninth conference game. The schedules are getting tougher than they used to be. I don’t know how you run a string of titles off. You have a lot more variance, needing to win 3-4 games in the playoffs to win.
   
• I don’t know what a dynasty is in college football anymore. Nick Saban is a genius. He got in there at the right time and got out at the right time. Now, he gets to talk about it.