A&M had the number one recruiting class going into the 2022 season… yet they failed to even meet expectations. What went wrong in a year filled with upsets and head scratchers?
COLLEGE STATION, Texas– In a college football landscape dominated by parity, it’s easy to pick winners on paper. A better recruiting class here, bigger kids over there, the art of winning and losing games seems like clear cut science. If Georgia’s dominant win over TCU in the 2022 National Championship game taught us anything, it’s that stars matter. Talent matters.
Yet if it’s not science, what is it? It’s exactly what we said it was. A profound art.
In 2022, Texas A&M stunned the college football world with the best recruiting class the sport had ever seen in its 20 years or so of using the recruiting ranking metric. The Aggies scored higher than 2018 Georgia and 2017’s Alabama team which had Justin Fields and Najee Harris respectively. The team broke history.
However, there’s always more than meets the eye. Despite topping the charts with undisputable talent, A&M sputtered when forced to create results. The Aggies finished the 2022 season 5-7 and 2-6 in the SEC. An abysmal record for a team that was supposed to match up against even the biggest of giants in college football’s most talented conference.
If we’re talking about breaking history, A&M did it again on the back end of the season following a loss at Auburn which put them in the record ledger as the first team ever to have a top recruiting class and finish below .500. Not exactly the prestigious award Jimbo Fisher and Co. were looking for.
The season went awry off the bat in Week 2 with a stunning 17-14 loss to Appalachian State. The offense couldn’t get its wheels turning and the defense looked a mess. Where to even begin? The omens continued with a 6 game losing streak starting in Starkville getting blown out by Mississippi State. So. The question remains… what went wrong for the Aggies?
Win or lose, it all gets tied back to the man running the show– Jimbo Fisher. Coming over to A&M in 2018 from an ACC powerhouse in Florida State, the 12th man had right to applaud. On a 10-year, 75 million dollar deal, the Aggies tied down Fisher for good. Plus giving him a contingency plan if things went south.
In the brutal SEC West, things looked up. Just a couple of years into his tenure in the Lone Star State, Fisher had Texas A&M on the footsteps of the College Football Playoff during the 2020 season. That performance earned Fisher an extension in 2021 which locked him up de facto with a heavy buyout in the event that the A&M brass ever wanted him to hit the trail.
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Yet zoom out at Fisher’s career in College Station and you’ll see a loop of mediocrity sprinkled in with some average. A&M has consistently been okay in the SEC West, with Fisher posting a career W/L record of 39-21, nothing stands out as dominant.
Sure, college football is greater than how big the number is in that first column… but in reality, it’s not. It’s a ruthless world, with coaches being fired at will for a lot less production than Fisher. It’s easy to argue that A&M has dug this hole for themselves, paying excessive premiums for a head coach who has hovered around the 8 and 7 win mark throughout his 5 years in College Station. Yet, it’s up to Jimbo Fisher to deliver, something he’s done exceptionally well with heavily ranked recruiting classes, yet has yet to perform on the field.
Take a look at Jimbo’s offense— a unique system like not many others in the NCAA.
His use of downfield routes and reliance on exceptional quarterback play is something the rest of the college football landscape is straying away from and for good reason. Helming the quarterback position is hard; and blue chip recruits that pan out are few and far between. This discrepancy is a direct direction away from the grain when it comes to CFB offense. Most teams in this day and age use RPOs and shotgun offensive schemes to drive their O down the field. The spread offensive philosophy has taken hold in college football for a reason. It allows the quarterback to make reads, never allowing the defense to be right and to lay some of the brunt of the offense on other players instead of just the QB.
Fisher’s offense puts a lot of stress on the accuracy of his quarterback, something that could’ve been done against ACC defenses during his time at Florida State, but much harder against SEC defensive schemes loaded with talent and speed. Fisher’s offensive philosophy also relies on excellent quarterbacks to be under center at all times, which the Aggies couldn’t have been further from.
Their quarterback room could be described in one word– rollercoaster. In a year marked with 3 quarterbacks and subpar performances, it never allowed the Jimbo offense to take full hold. Now, with only one QB signed in the 2023 class and their 2022 starter Haynes King in the transfer portal, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where the offense can truly live up to its true philosophy potential.
Fisher had an all-star QB in the form of Kellen Mond, who did bring some success to the program. Mond posted win totals of 8, 8, and 9 respectively throughout his 3 years at a starter, but since then, it’s been slim pickings trying to find a quarterback suited for Fisher’s system.
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Pair that with the fact that A&M’s explosive recruiting class has yet to make an impact. It’s certainly not a bad thing, players take time to develop, especially at the college level. However, A&M still has the talent to certainly win more than 5 games. Fisher has been putting together a masterclass of players for some time now. Sure, it’s doesn’t compare to the ’22 iteration, but those players still have yet to mesh together to create a cohesive unit. 5-star cornerback Denver Harris has left the equation, entering the transfer portal, showing that the age and culture of A&M still has yet to mature to the level of the likes of Georgia and Alabama.
The injury bug has also caught up with the Aggies throughout the season. The aforementioned quarterback fiasco was due in part to injuries riddling the QB room, paired along with poor play. The end result: mediocrity and raw talent showing their head in a stacked competition pool. Star receiver Ainias Smith missed most of the year due to a lower body injury, not doing any favors for Fisher’s idiosyncratic offensive MO. It’s not enough to forgive Texas A&M’s misfires, but it is enough to be a factor and take a step back to look at the big picture.
A&M has been the centerpoint of the SEC’s barrage of recruiting complaints, from Alabama head coach Nick Saban accusing A&M’s successful recruitment strategies of being “pay-to-win” and “unfair”. Tell us something we don’t know coach.
It seems to have taken a toll on the recruiting class as 2023’s has landed itself in the high 20s instead of the grand slam Fisher and company got in 2022. A regression may or may not be what this team needs in a time of do or die. On one end, a step back may force Fisher to look elsewhere in the vast pool of players at his disposal. Either forcing someone on the roster to step up when the seas get a little rough or direct his attention to the transfer portal which is getting bigger and bigger as the weeks dredge on.
On the flip side of things, a lowly recruiting class could send A&M into a further downward spiral with a sense of brevity as their current players struggle to live up to the hype. Either way, A&M will be forced to take a deep look in the mirror and soul search as the SEC West only gets more competitive and the public gets even more impatient and outspoken.
