Five star recruits and nothing to show for it, the firing of Jimbo Fisher is the end of a tumultuous tenure at Texas A&M, and the school’s impatience was long overdue
Chris Claybon and Kizer Craig contributed to this story
The question has always been who’s going to open up their checkbooks. Deep pockets have ran the sport of college football since its inception. In 2017, Texas A&M dug deep into their checking account in order to poach Jimbo Fisher from his seven-year tenure at Florida State with a 10-year, $95 million contract meant to revitalize the program. Since 2013, Texas A&M was looking for another rise to provenance after the departure of superstar quarterback Johnny Manziel and to make a lasting impact in the SEC after they joined in 2012.
Jimbo Fisher was supposed to be the solution. After nearly six years of high expectations, altitude-sickening flashes of the peak, and a lasting, sobering taste of the abyss, Texas A&M decided enough was enough. The school announced they would let go of Fisher, sending the school’s brass once again finding their pens to sign a $75 million buyout and searching for more than just a new coach. Answers.
To A&M’s credit, they followed an age-old mantra to a T. If you want to make a splash, you have to drop the cash. And so they did. The rationale being Fisher’s national championship win with the Seminoles in 2013, the same year that Manziel took off for the Cleveland Browns. In order to lure someone like that, you have to make a good case. A fully-guaranteed deal only sweetened the pot for a coach looking to make a lasting impact on a new team.
Fisher was paid like the national champion he was, yet his time in College Station was filled with missed goals, low ceilings, and a path of mediocrity that the Aggies seemed to have follow them throughout Fisher’s tenure.
Rarely ever do you see a coach get fired after a 51-10 blowout win against a conference rival. But that’s exactly what A&M did to Fisher after the Aggies’ beatdown of Mississippi State on Saturday. While unorthodox, it was exactly the straw athletic director Ross Bjork needed to pull the trigger on cutting ties. It showed what this A&M program was capable of, and the fact was crystal-clear that Fisher couldn’t get them to the promised land.
“After very careful analysis of all the components related to Texas A&M football, I recommended to President [Mark] Welsh and then Chancellor [John] Sharp that a change in the leadership of the program was necessary in order for Aggie football to reach our full potential and they accepted my decision,” Bjork said in a statement. “We appreciate Coach Fisher’s time here at Texas A&M and we wish him the best in his future endeavors.”
Fisher was signed with a National Championship in mind, but it’s become apparent that he can’t get the job done. This is despite a Top-5 finish in 2020, granted, it was the Covid year. The Aggies seemed to be finally getting over the hump, staying competitive in the ever so difficult SEC. Then, in 2021, the program took a step back, winning less games but accumulating more losses in the process, jumping from 9-1 to an average 8-4. In 2022, it all fell apart– with the Aggies finishing with a losing record at 5-7 and a clear clock on Fisher’s stay with the 12th man.
It’s all baffling. How can a team that has all the pieces– a national championship-winning head coach, consistent top-10 recruiting classes, and enough funding to buy every player their own 747 see such a downfall? No matter the solution, the result is obvious, A&M is done with a perplexing reign by Jimbo Fisher, and it was time to say goodbye.
When Jimbo Fisher arrived in Brazos County in 2017, he leaned into the pomp and the revelry but made a very simple, transpicuous statement, “We have to understand that we’re not interested in being good. We’re interested in being elite. We’re interested in being great.”
Yet, A&M was never great. At best, they were just average. Schools don’t pay someone $75 million to be average. Going back to the blowout win against Mississippi State, while most fans celebrated, Texas A&M’s upper echelon wasn’t impressed. The fact remained that the team that was hyped and riled up beyond belief the past two postseasons with a recruiting class that any blue blood would’ve killed for, was now 6-4.
Teams don’t pay coaches $95 million to go 6-4.
It was a pyrrhic victory for the school’s administration. It was a masterclass of what the team had to offer talent-wise. The team showed it had high-SEC levels of talent, putting them, at least on that plane in the realm of reach of Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and LSU. However, appalling losses to Alabama, Tennessee, and Ole Miss drove the point home that A&M is no closer to their national championship dreams than six years ago when they hired Fisher. In fact, A&M still got caught up in a battle with unranked, out-of-conference Miami, who they lost to 33-48.
Pair that with Fisher’s overall record, 45-25 as well as this year’s in-conference 4-3 showing, and somewhere along the line over the past half-decade, A&M became enamored with just trying to be “good”, never mind “elite”.
A&M became enamored with just trying to be ‘good’, never mind ‘elite’
“The assessment that I delivered was that we are not reaching our full potential,” Bjork said in a news conference. “We are not in the championship conversation and something was not quite right about our direction and the plan.
“We should be relevant on the national scene.”
Now, look at Fisher’s unique coaching strategy from multiple angles. A complicated offense, general mismanagement within games, and a full-fledged beacon for upsets, all led to Fisher’s ousting from the team. We can count plenty of times A&M was on upset watch, it got to the point where we were sick of talking about it.
TAKE A REWIND BACK: What Went Wrong For Texas A&M Despite Having an Excellent Recruiting Class?
Fisher’s future was in question after multiple games this season… and that’s where the issue lies.
We didn’t know if it was after failing to win against a weakened Alabama team that was void of a formidable quarterback talent like years past, or was it even the fact that the Aggies don’t have a single ranked win this year after three last year. No matter what angle you try to look at it, it keeps feeling like A&M continues to regress.
Would Fisher be put on the hot seat after an upset loss against Appalachian State in 2022 even after the Aggies came in as 19-point favorites? Or would it be after this year’s loss to Ole Miss? Or what about a loss to a crumbling Tennessee who would later get pummeled by Mizzou who’s on an actual upwards trajectory?
Dissecting the reason for why A&M made Jimbo Fisher walk the plank is an involute one. Other than his ability to be on upset watch 24/7, his inability to make a profound impact on offense nearly halved his unique value proposition as a head coach. Fisher was brought in to be the team’s savior on offense, after all, it was his innovative scheme that landed Florida State on the top of the college football landscape.
But it never clicked. Frustration from a lackluster offense forced him to bring in coaching firepower in defaced former Arkansas head coach Bobby Petrino as the offensive coordinator earlier this year. The move forced the school to open up their pocketbook even more, a decision that was met with questions about Fisher’s reputation as a offensive guru. Fisher’s offense was always regarded as complicated, outdated, and tough to learn quick.
We can count plenty of times A&M was on upset watch, it got to the point where we were sick of talking about it
His up-tempo offense never translated to A&M, who’s suffered quarterback issues, wide receiver issues, and struggles to keep players around in the transfer portal era. While Fisher never had a Jameis Winston like he did in Tallahassee, a good offense shouldn’t need a borderline Heisman trophy winner to play quarterback.
Texas A&M averaged 28.0 points per game dating back to Fisher’s arrival, which ranks sixth in the league and sits 14 points per game behind the elites of the SEC– Alabama, Georgia, and LSU, all of which A&M was supposed to compete with, but can’t seem to keep up with.
No matter what the reason was, throughout the massive maelstrom that was A&M football, Fisher had one sobering statistic– his record was worse than his predecessor Kevin Sumlin (51-26). He desperately needed to reach the nine win mark that he achieved in 2020 in order to keep his job secure according to The Athletic, but with four losses already on the board– it’s impossible.
So, we go back to the Mississippi State game. Why was Jimbo Fisher fired after a 51-10 win? Failed expectations. This team proved that everything is there: the facilities, the support, the funding, and the players (if you can keep them). The new coach would have to BYOC, bring their own culture, because just as Jimbo Fisher feared, good became good enough.
