Some of what you’re about to read I wrote before the Ole Miss game. I had outlined a piece called, “What to do with Jimbo Fisher.”
After the South Carolina game, I knew what was coming. We were headed for a 7-5 finish.
I didn’t think Jimbo would use the bye week to adjust and do anything differently. He hadn’t done it in the past so why would he do it this season? I did want to see if he would before passing the final judgment. The South Carolina game proved it to me. He was set in his ways.
After the Ole Miss game, I was dejected. The same old Jimbo we’ve seen for the last three seasons stuck to his guns and didn’t adapt a single thing. We were headed squarely for 7-5 because there was no way he was beating LSU in Baton Rouge.
I didn’t want to continue writing the same things I’ve written over and over again related to the deficiencies of what Jimbo has done the last three seasons. I’m focusing on the last three seasons because I feel that’s his true body of work. 2020 was great but that was ages ago and a single blip in his six seasons at A&M.
He’s had time to get his recruits in along with some longevity with his staff. He can’t blame anyone else for the state of the program over the last three seasons. It’s entirely on him. I also believe your more recent history is your most relevant history.
Jimbo’s last three seasons at A&M have fallen well short of expectations and it wasn’t going to change anytime soon. It wasn’t going to change anytime soon because Jimbo was going to stick to his guns trying to prove everyone wrong. He believed his way was still a way to win a national championship.
He couldn’t even sniff the SEC West but he routinely talked about how to win a national championship. That’s a coach detached from reality.
Mississippi State Game:
Before I get going on my thoughts about Jimbo Fisher I do want to briefly touch on the Mississippi State game.
Walking to the game with my buddies I said, “I wonder if Petrino tells Jimbo to take his hands off the offense. Henderson is his guy and he’s going to run the offense as he sees fit.”
I’ll be damned if I didn’t nail that one. We saw something out of a quarterback we hadn’t seen in some time. We saw a quarterback produce on the ground and through the air. We haven’t seen something like that in the last 3 years where our starting quarterback took over the game. Jaylen Henderson was damn impressive.
Sure, he missed a couple of deep passes but he had thrown 8 passes in his collegiate career before Saturday night. Those passes were 2 seasons ago so I’m not going to fault a guy who wasn’t perfect on the night. The dude showed up in a big way though.
I’ve had a feeling Jimbo constrained the offense all year. We didn’t see those constraints on Saturday night. We saw an offense use the zone read to neutralize the threat of a crashing defensive end. We saw an offense roll out a quarterback rather than drop straight back to keep pressure off of him.
We saw clear plays designed for this defense they weren’t expecting. We FINALLY saw creativity from an Aggie offense. It wasn’t without fault but by and large, it was damn effective.
I’m not saying Jaylen Henderson is the second coming of Johnny Manziel. He caught Mississippi State by surprise and LSU will be more ready for him.
It was just refreshing to see an offensive scheme that was unique and not the same old tired 20 plays we’ve seen the last 3 seasons from Jimbo.
That’s my quick thoughts on Mississippi State.
Back to the piece I had started on Jimbo.
All of the bold and underlined areas I touched on were my outline before Ole Miss. I had outlined these items as key discussion points for what I thought was the inevitable decision when he went 7-5. After reading them two weeks later I think the outline points are still relevant.
I know it’s a little confusing but just trying to show in two weeks nothing changed for Jimbo. At the time I wrote those words he could still beat Ole Miss and win 10 games including the bowl game. He took himse
You will read words in present tense that should be past tense today.
<BEGIN TWO WEEKS AGO BEFORE OLE MISS>
First off, believe it or not, this is not a post on firing Jimbo Fisher. I don’t want Jimbo Fisher fired. I want Jimbo Fisher to win out this season including a bowl game for 10 wins.
I want Jimbo Fisher to have the Aggies as the second-best team in the SEC West. I want Jimbo Fisher to close a really strong recruiting class. I want Jimbo Fisher to have some momentum going into the offseason for the first time in 3 years.
Beyond this season, I want Jimbo Fisher to routinely compete for the SEC West. I want Jimbo Fisher to go to Atlanta to compete for the SEC Championship. I want Jimbo Fisher to get into the College Football Playoffs and compete for a national championship.
I want a statue of Jimbo Fisher outside of Kyle Field.
I really and truly want all of that.
I just don’t think it’s going to happen. Should this season play out like I think where we go 7-5 losing to Ole Miss and LSU on the road I think the decision-makers have a serious issue on their hands.
What to do with Jimbo Fisher?
Execution vs Scheme:
Jimbo is convinced his offensive style is the only style that can win a national title. He said so much after last year’s LSU win at Kyle Field. In a season where he went 5-7, he spent some of his post-game press conference crowing about how his offense is the type of offense that can win national championships.
YOU JUST WENT 5-7 AND YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT HOW TO WIN A NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP FROM AN OFFENSIVE STANDPOINT???
His specific comment was, “We are so caught up in tempo. Name me a tempo team that’s won a National Championship. There’s not one in the last 15 years.”
Well, Jimbo…
The 2015 season title game between Alabama and Clemson was a 45-40 contest won by Alabama where Nick Saban himself said he believed his defense could not stop Clemson’s offense. This is the reason he called the onside kick in the 4th quarter. Clemson was running a tempo offense with Deshaun Watson.
Clemson didn’t win THAT game but they certainly stressed Nick Saban’s defense to the point he called an onside kick because he didn’t have faith in his defense. Clemson would win the national championship the next season which was the 2016 full season. That same Clemson offense won the national championship the following season after stressing Nick Saban so much he felt he needed some luck via an onside kick to win the game.
Maybe there’s a fine line between urgency and tempo in Jimbo’s book.
Either way, both are a long way from the slow, plodding offense that Jimbo likes to run. Teams with an offensive urgency have won national titles in the last 15 years.
You can’t tell me the following offenses didn’t have some sense of urgency in trying to stress the defense beyond that 2016 Clemson offense I previously talked about:
2018 Clemson
2019 LSU
2020 Alabama
Sure, those offenses had elite quarterback and wide receiver play but much of what they did was operate with a sense of urgency to stress the defense. I suppose you could argue their offenses weren’t true “Tempo” offenses but they ABSOLUTELY had a sense of urgency and used their elite talent to stress defenses by quickly lining up and calling plays.
They certainly weren’t offenses that tried to bludgeon their opponents with perfect execution on every play. It was to line the ball up and let players make plays.
Jimbo has the weapons at his disposal but he refuses to utilize them to his advantage. He has an antiquated style of offense he needs to evolve.
He hired Bobby Petrino to run the offense but nothing has appeared to have changed. The only thing that appears to have changed is that all of his playsheets and notes are with Bobby in the coaching booth. The style of offense is the same.
That’s all on Jimbo.
Look around college football. Everyone is running some kind of offense with an urgency that can stress the defense. They’re attacking sideline to sideline to make the defense defend the entire width and length of the field.
They’re doing it urgently so the defense doesn’t have time to rest or get set. You don’t have to run this pace the whole game but there’s absolutely a time and place to have some sense of urgency with your offense in a game.
Jimbo simply talks about perfect execution. Seriously. Execution is all he talks about. Thanks to the power of the Internet we have proof:
118 times in 19 games Jimbo has referenced execution as the sole reason for the success or lack of success for his offense.
At what point does Jimbo admit some scheme issues are leading to all of these struggles and not just straight-up execution?
Jimbo needs to get with the times. His slow and plodding offensive style is antiquated. Defenses know what to expect with his offense which makes execution by his players more difficult.
It’s more scheme than execution despite what he thinks.
Humps vs. Hills:
A common argument is just to give Jimbo more time. There’s a long list of college coaches who won after years of being at their schools.
That’s not true. Most coaches that have won national championships in the last 20 years have done so in the first 5 years.
Mack Brown and Dabo Swinney are kind of the outliers taking longer than that but in the time it took them to win their first national championship they were routinely winning 10 games and were the second-best team in their conference.
Jimbo Fisher is a long way from routinely winning 10 games and being the second-best team in his division.
It’s not a hump that Jimbo is just trying to get over. He’s got a hill bordering on a mountain he needs to get over.
<END WORDS WRITTEN BEFORE OLE MISS>
Now we’re back to the present tense.
As I read all of that two weeks later I believed it was even more accurate after what happened at Ole Miss and what we showed against Mississippi State with a different quarterback and offensive scheme.
The decision-makers at A&M decided to make the change with Jimbo. I applaud them for what they did. It needed to be done. It’s a painful thing to admit due to the money involved but for the sake of the football program it needed to be done.
Jimbo was not going to wake up one day and adapt to what he needed to do. He was stuck in a time warp from over a decade ago.
A&M needed to make the change.
I’ll keep moving on to the topics I planned to write two weeks ago.
Blaming the Players:
I can’t tell you how tired I got of Jimbo blaming the players. Obviously he routinely blamed lack of execution which is blaming the players.
His BS about fighting for inches got old too. They’re only fighting for inches because they’re talented and your coaching sucks.
I got tired of him dressing down quarterbacks. There’s a time and place for it but he spent the whole damn game yelling at his quarterback. So much so he quit paying attention to the ball in the Auburn game because he wanted to yell at Max Johnson and was standing on the field while the play was alive.
After the Ole Miss game, he blamed Randy Bond for kicking the ball an inch too low on the potential game-tying field goal attempt. Never mind it was the FIFTH blocked kick of the season. Couldn’t have been the lack of special teams coaching or scheme. It was the player’s fault for not anticipating a potential block and kicking it higher.
The photo I used for this piece is Jimbo dressing down Max in the Ole Miss game. The dude was getting hammered and Jimbo was just piling on. I’m sure it got old being dressed down like that the entire game.
He pretended to blame himself as well but he never truly meant it. Which is why he wouldn’t change his ways.
Most Coaches Are Interchangeable:
The sad reality in college football that nobody wants to admit is every coach other than Nick Saban and Kirby Smart is interchangeable. They’re the two outliers in college football.
Sure, there are tiers of coaches in the college ranks but the dropoff from Saban and Smart to the rest of college football is pretty far.
Everybody wants to talk about Urban Meyer as an elite level coach but do you see any drop off from him to Ryan Day at Ohio State? I don’t. Urban was a VERY successful college coach. However, if he never gets Tim Tebow to Gainesville I’m not sure he sniffs a national championship at Florida and he doesn’t get the job at Ohio State. He likely flames out.
Ohio State is a perennial winner because of its location and conference. Some of it is coaching for sure but several people have had the same level of success Urban had at Ohio State. Ohio State while REALLY good under Urban only won one title.
He certainly never attained the level of success Saban and Smart have had at their schools.
Urban’s time at Jacksonville in the NFL shows me while he was a solid coach he had some really good timing at Florida with Tim Tebow and the defensive talent Ron Zook left him. I’m not trying to take anything away from Urban but just trying to show there are a lot of external factors to most coaches winning it all.
Urban had great timing.
Moving on from Urban let’s talk about Dabo Swinney. I know he’s a piñata right now but Dabo is THE perfect example for the reality of most college coaches – You’re only as good as your coordinators and starting quarterback.
With Brent Venables running his defense and Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence under center he won two national titles. He also played for two more which is an amazing accomplishment. From a success standpoint, Dabo is the third most successful coach in college football.
The coordinator and quarterback luck hold for Ed Orgeron, Jimbo Fisher, Gene Chizik, and Mack Brown. All four of those guys had great coordinators and a Heisman winner or runner-up as their quarterback.
I’m leaving off Les Miles because he’s essentially the Barry Switzer in the NFL of college football. Much like Switzer taking over from Jimmy Johnson, Miles took over from Saban. Only a fool wouldn’t have won a national championship with what was left to them.
Outside of Saban and Smart, the coordinator and quarterback are just as, if not, as important as the head coach.
Despite all of that, colleges are paying coaches like Nick Saban and Kirby Smart to grow on trees. You just have to find one and pay them before they win it all. They don’t grow on trees. It can be fool’s folly to pay someone to be something that they’re not.
In reality, just hire a coach who’s got some recruiting ability and the smarts to hire top coordinators. Then you roll the dice every season and hope some luck with an amazing quarterback finds you.
It also helps if you’re in the SEC.
Recruiting Momentum:
One of my greatest concerns with holding on to Jimbo was his recruiting momentum was about to slow down big time.
Texas A&M has a solid NIL machine but kids still want to win games. The 2022 recruiting class was sold on winning a national championship. Two seasons later they couldn’t be further from that goal with Jimbo as head coach.
If Jimbo were to start losing recruits which I suspect was about to happen, elite recruits in future classes would be harder to come by. When you lose recruiting momentum in college football due to not winning enough it’s hard to get it back. If ever even get it back. That’s where Jimbo was about to be with recruiting.
I think we were also staring at a lot of transfer portal entries this go-round. Not the backups we saw last season but starting talent looking to go somewhere and win football games.
Don’t think opposing coaches weren’t going to use 5-7 and 7-5 to their advantage.
I’m positive it was about to get bad. Three seasons of failed expectations spoke for itself.
As we’ve seen with other coaching staffs once you lose recruiting momentum you’re a dead man walking. The hole for the next coach is that much bigger.
Now vs Later:
If the Aggie decision-makers can make a solid hire they can hold a portion of this team together AND keep the recruiting machine going. A&M is recruiting at a level it hasn’t seen but momentum is still a very real thing. I think some of the elite recruiting was Jimbo but let’s not kid ourselves that A&M is VERY competitive on the NIL front.
Let’s give another coach a shot at doing something with the talent on the team and in the pipeline rather than come in a year or two later with a total rebuild.
A competent coach and staff can win big next year. The talent is on the team and in the recruiting pipeline if we can hold it.
I don’t think there’s any way Jimbo was going to hold a good portion of the talent. A new coach at least has a chance.
That’s why the move needed to be made now and not later.
Those That Came Before Him:
In the end, Jimbo Fisher will be no different than those who came before him in Aggieland.
He did recruit at a superior level compared to the coaches before him but his on-the-field performance was the same or worse. He had one good season out of six but didn’t do enough with the resources he had.
Why that is I have no idea but we need to try something different with this next hire.
We need someone who is truly hungry. None of the guys we’ve hired since R.C. Slocum were truly hungry.
Fran was too caught up with the perception of himself and had already won a national championship in his mind. Mike Sherman while a fine person was not a college head coach. Kevin Sumlin was never equipped to be a big-time college head coach.
Jimbo wanted to prove to everyone he could win a national championship in his style. He didn’t want to adapt and instead took a big paycheck to prove people wrong.
Let’s get someone who hasn’t won anything and is super hungry to win it all. How you identify that I’m not totally sure but give me someone who hasn’t won anything of real substance or thinks too much of themselves and is willing to put in the work to win a national championship.
Dan Lanning:
Dan Lanning has been my key target since I started thinking Jimbo might get let go this season. I was actually on the Elko train for a bit but that had more to do with finances and reality.
I like Lanning the most because he’s coached in the SEC under Saban and Smart. He’s had pretty good success at Oregon. I think it’s important to have had some time as a head coach at a big program to show you can do it. He checks that box.
He’s not been perfect as a head coach but that’s okay. He’s won a lot more than he’s lost and hopefully learned some coaching lessons along the way.
He’s young and appears to understand the recruiting game. After all, he hired away the architect of Jimbo’s vaunted 2022 class.
Yes, you read that correctly. Lanning hired the guy who was the key component to that 2022 class at Texas A&M. His name is Marshall Malchow. He also spent time with Lanning at Alabama and Georgia.
Lanning’s Offensive Coordinator also has heavy Texas ties. He’s been at UTSA, Lake Travis, and Texas. I know time spent at UTSA and Lake Travis doesn’t seem like much but he’s continued Bo Nix’s development and is familiar with the state of Texas.
There’s a lot to like about Lanning considering his success as a head coach at Oregon, his time spent under Kirby Smart and Nick Saban, and having some staff he’d likely bring that has strong awareness of Texas.
I think he’s a coach that would hit the ground running in no time.
I believe Lanning is THE key target and it’s okay to “break the bank” on. I’m not saying give him a 10-year deal at $9.5 million per year but I do think it’s fine to give him an 8 million dollar-a-year contract for 6 years. That’s $48 million total guaranteed.
I know he has a $20 million buyout but that’s the cost of doing business for a guy like him.
I’m also fine throwing in some serious incentives for 10-win seasons, College Football Playoff Appearances since it’s going to 12 teams, Division Championships, Conference Championships, and of course a MASSIVE incentive for winning a National Championship.
I’m talking about throwing a $10 million carrot for winning it all.
I do have questions if Lanning would take the job considering he’s in the hunt for a Pac-12 title and berth in the College Football Playoff. I know he also came out and said he had no interest in leaving Oregon. We’ve heard that before from other coaches so take that for what it’s worth.
If I do have one concern about Lanning it’s that he’s a bit prickly. He’s not the smoothest talker but I don’t care. I want someone more interested in winning football games than winning press conferences. He also has a slight Tom Herman vibe but not going to hold that against him as he’s won at a big program.
Either way, he’s the candidate I make tell me no before I move on to anyone else. Even if he said he’s not interested. He may not have realized what he was saying no to.
At least say we tried everything we could to hire him.
The Others:
Mike Elko – Mike Elko has always been my safety hire if we needed to fire Jimbo and save some bucks. What he’s done at Duke is remarkable. My biggest question with Elko is if he has a limited ceiling. He seems like that 9-3 to 10-2 coach at A&M. That’s MUCH better than we’ve experienced in the past but I don’t know if it’s enough. The man can coach football but I’m not sure he’s geared for what a perennial national title contender needs.
Jeff Traylor – Much like Elko, he seems like a safe hire who will improve from where Jimbo was but I believe has a ceiling. If we wound up with Traylor I wouldn’t be upset but I think we’re looking at a perennial 9-3 and 10-2 coach because he doesn’t have the elite level experience.
Lane Kiffin – I LOVE Kiffin as a football coach. He’s got a great football mind but it ends there. When things don’t go his way he becomes very petulant. He seems to think he’s got a ceiling at Ole Miss which is true but he doesn’t need to verbally express it every time something doesn’t go his way. Pass on him.
Deion Sanders – I thought Deion was the perfect hire for Auburn last season. They screwed that up. I don’t have a problem with his flash but I do wonder about his ability to coach in games. We just don’t have a good sample set due to a host of reasons. I know the shine is off him right now. The reality is other than getting stomped by Oregon they’ve been pretty competitive in the rest of their games. They blew a MASSIVE lead to Stanford but other than that they’ve only lost to ranked teams. This was a 1-11 team last season that’s now 5-5 in a pretty good conference this season. He’s someone I wouldn’t take off the list just yet. Like most things in life don’t let the media narrative around him influence the decision making. What he’s done at Colorado is REALLY impressive when you remove the flash and talking heads. He needs to be considered as the process plays out. I don’t think he’s the guy but I’m not going to dismiss him solely because of perception. He’s better than a LOT of college coaches. I do think he’d be better off at a program that needs more of a rebuild which isn’t A&M right now. I don’t want to see him at Arkansas or Mississippi State though.
Elijah Robinson – This is my heart-string candidate. This guy seems to have that Terry Price aura to him. Those guys don’t always make good head coaches but as the coaching search plays out and he gets to coach two games let’s see what happens. If Lanning doesn’t take the job and Robinson beats Brian Kelly in Baton Rouge I think he’s all of a sudden a serious candidate assuming players aren’t entering the transfer portal and recruits are holding. My biggest question with Robinson beyond his ability as head coach is what does he want? If he’s never truly wanted to be a head coach it’s not a gear he can just turn on. It’s something he should have been building to.
Kalen DeBoer – This guy seems like a winner but his body of work at a massive program is pretty small. He won big at Sioux Falls over a decade ago and then bounced around coordinator positions at minor programs before getting the Fresno State job for a couple of seasons. He then landed the Washington job where he’s done pretty well but with an outstanding quarterback. I have no clue if he has any interest in this part of the world and the SEC. This guy is the wildest of wildcards. I just don’t know enough about him and don’t think anyone does either.
Glenn Schumann – Schumann is THE assistant coach in college football simply because he sits next to the throne of college football in Kirby Smart. He’s young at 33 but has Texas ties having graduated from McKinney Boyd. His dad was a football coach and Schumann started his coaching career at Alabama under Saban where he got tight with Smart and moved with him to Georgia. Schumann is by far the biggest roll-of-the-dice candidate out there. He’s got no skins but his pedigree is as good as it gets for any assistant in college football. If you’re going to gamble on an assistant he’s the guy without question.
Jake Spavital – Just wanted to give you a giggle if you’re still reading this.
Summary:
Jimbo needed to go. The money is an unfortunate thing but the move had to be made for the health of the Aggie football program. It was pretty clear Jimbo wasn’t going to get it done. He was stuck in the past and stubborn to the point he wanted to prove doubters wrong. That’s a bad combination.
Had we waited to let him go we might have saved some money but we would have put the program in a bigger hole for the next guy. It would likely have cost us more money over time. It was time to make the move.
This will be THE defining hire of Ross Bjork’s career. Even he doesn’t know who it’s going to be right now. If he did we’d know about it.
Whoever it is will be walking into as good of a situation as you get in college football. That is assuming they can sell the current players and committed recruits. If they can do that AND coach modern-day college football we’re going to see a massive spike in wins next season.
Now we just sit back and see if it happens.
Sorry, you didn’t win, Jimbo.
R.C. Would Have Gone For 2 