COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KRHD) — With just one week until kickoff, Texas A&M football players are embracing an "it's personal" mentality as they prepare for their season opener against UTSA at Kyle Field.
"Everybody wants to win, you know, that's the main thing. Everybody's tired of seeing us saying we're going to be an 8-4 team and stuff like that, so it's really disrespectful and you know everybody's taking that on the heart," senior defensive back Will Lee III said. "So everybody's coming out here every day working hard and just trying to be the greatest team we can be and then change the history of Texas A&M football."
So their goals for this season are simple...
"SEC Championship and the National Championship. That's a good season," Lee III said.
"Going to and winning the SEC championship and going into the playoffs and for the O-line, our goal is the Joe Moore Award, being a veteran O-line group that's very attainable for us," senior offensive lineman Trey Zuhn III said.
The team has already begun preparing for their season opener against UTSA.
"Yeah, we've been game planning, you know, a lot of the guys on the team going out of their way and getting extra filming before the coaches even brought it up to the players," Lee said. "You know, it's really important to us to come out here and win our first game and put on a show for everybody."
Year two brings continuity
Throughout the offseason, roster retention and continuity have played a big part in building off the foundation they laid last fall. Players have seen firsthand how having a year in head coach Mike Elko's system has made a difference during fall camp.
"It just comes down to being a year ahead of where we were last year. We were still trying to install the playbook, still trying to get people on the same page for different reasons like team chemistry wise, but now we were able to skip all of that and just hit the ground running, learning upper-level stuff like the PhD stuff I was talking about," Zuhn said. "We started so much further ahead than we were last year."
"Just seeing how everybody came together this fall camp, you know, just seeing a lot of the guys, a lot of the guys bond together and take that extra time out of their day to meet and make sure everything is going and everything's on the right page, you know," Lee said.
Texas A&M will open the season against UTSA on Saturday at Kyle Field. Kickoff is set for 6:00 p.m.
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