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Thoughts from the Notre Dame Game

Hello darkness, our old Aggie friend
I’m writing another blog about disappointment yet again

I hate to say I saw this loss coming, but if you read my pre-season ramblings, I certainly knew it was possible.

You can read those here – https://rcwouldhavegonefor2.com/2024/08/28/ramblings-and-musings-for-the-2024-aggies/

This wasn’t a horrible loss by any stretch, but to say it was disappointing is an understatement.

The Aggie football team had most of college football watching to see if they could make a statement. Aggie fans everywhere were full of hope, hoping to see a sign that things would be different.

There was no statement and indeed no sign. This was just another Aggie team with a chance to take a massive leap in the hierarchy of college football. But like so many times before, that step simply slipped away.

Same thing, different season. Great seasons appear to be an anomaly and not a standard.

A fan base that yearns for more respect in college football with a football program that rarely delivers. Expectations and reality are completely out of whack.

Sure, the Aggies can still salvage this season, but what was on display on Saturday night suggests that this team will struggle to reach eight wins.

Notre Dame is a really good football team, but it’s not elite. It’s a storied program with a schedule that only tests them in 2-3 games. The rest of the way, Florida State and USC are their only ranked opponents. They likely punched their ticket to the College Football Playoff with that win last night because they’re probably going 10-2 this season, and they’re Notre Dame.

Even though they’re likely headed to the CFP, they were totally beatable. There will be some talk that might be the best defense A&M plays all season. That may be, but the Aggie offense was utterly inept against it.

I’m not even sure that’ll be one of the best three defenses we face all year. It’s certainly a defense that’s been elevated by its schedule.

I think the lack of offense was more due to the Aggie offense being completely inept than the Notre Dame defense being stifling. That’s a good Notre Dame defense, but that Aggie offense was MISERABLE.

I will put more structure into this blog rather than my ramblings and musings like last time.

Coaching:

I don’t hate the Elko hire, but I’ve always questioned if Mike Elko is an elite head coach.

What he did at Duke was impressive as he certainly elevated their football program, but it’s not like he put Duke football on a different level. They were 8-4 and 7-5 in his two seasons.

He had some nice wins over those two years, but he also had some disappointing losses they could have won, most notably Notre Dame and North Carolina last season.

What would Aggie fans have thought of the hire if he hadn’t been the Aggie defensive coordinator?

We love hiring coaches that “get A&M,” but I don’t know if that’s the best criteria.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t have hired Elko and I’m certainly not saying he should be fired. It’s not even close to that at all. We need to simply look at Mike Elko for what games he’s been a head coach and what they have shown us.

Mike Elko will be our head coach for a few seasons, but nothing in his sample set shows he’s an elite-level head coach. Elite-level head coaching was not on display on Saturday night.

I hope I’m wrong, but I can only go on actual results. Those results aren’t elite right now.

I think most people have seen the video clip of Elko waving the white flag on the final drive and yelling at whoever was on the head set with Colin Klein to run the ball. He was more spirited than that, but Elko was not happy with Klein’s play-calling.

I’m not worried about the emotion. I love the emotion.

I’m worried about our head coach and offensive coordinator not being on the same page even if it appeared to be a meaningless drive.

Throughout the game, Elko was on the sidelines with a headset. I assume he has direct contact with his offensive coordinator. I hope he has regular conversations with his offensive coordinator during the game.

We can argue about Elko waving the white flag on the final drive, but at that moment, why did the offensive coordinator not know what his head coach wanted to do? Or was Klein acting in defiance of what his head coach wanted to do?

Maybe it was just a misunderstanding, but it’s a flag to me about how Elko handles the offensive side of the ball. I know Elko is a defensive coach, and I don’t want him calling the offensive plays. I ABSOLUTELY want him to give feedback and guidance to his offensive coordinator throughout the game, though.

That’s his job as head coach and should make the offensive coordinator’s job easier. This way, Klien can focus more on calling plays rather than spending time thinking through what direction he wants to call plays.

An elite-level head coach offers his coordinators guidance. His job is to watch the entire game, offer feedback on what’s happening, and give guidance on where to go.

I’ll get to the offense in a bit, but I hope what happened at the end was a misunderstanding and not a sign that Klein is operating the offense in a complete vacuum.

Mike Elko had a chance to make a statement on Saturday night and he didn’t. We knew the game was likely going to be an ugly offensive game. The Aggies as a whole looked really unprepared for that game. Especially on offense

I get that the coaching staff and a large part of the roster are new, but they’ve had plenty of time to prepare and look more crisp.

We certainly didn’t see elite coaching on Saturday night.

I suppose we can only go up from here, but we need to get there quickly. Mike Elko furthered the perception that the Texas A&M football team is not prepared to take that next step and make a statement. It looks like more of the same.

That will hurt our recruiting in a horrible way if it doesn’t turn around.

Mike Elko needs to win now in a huge way. sooner than later.

Offense:

Play calling:

Before I get to the obvious concern about the offense, I have to talk about the play calling.

This looked like a Jimbo Fisher called offense but with new and improved motion! Like when a crappy beer updates its can. It’s the same crappy beer, but there’s new vibrant colors on the can!

In all seriousness, there did not appear to be a comprehensive plan for this offense. It looked like a random selection of plays based on the play before it. Nothing was being set up, and it didn’t seem like this offense had any real idea of how to attack Notre Dame’s defense.

This offense looked slow, plodding, and not crisp at all. It looked like the last six years of Aggie Football.

I saw ZERO wrinkles that surprised Notre Dame. It was a straightforward offense that Notre Dame could defend.

To be fair, the quarterback play was not helping at all, but there didn’t appear to be any adapting to how the quarterback was playing.

It was like, “Oh shit. That play didn’t work. Try this one. Dang. That didn’t work either. Try this one. Crap. Okay, punt the ball, and we’ll see if we can figure out something for the next series.”

Just a bunch of haphazard plays that had no apparent rhyme or reason. If Jimbo Fisher was watching this game, he was nodding in agreement at the futility of this offense.

Just like he would have called, but with new and improved motion!

Quarterback:

First off, I don’t care that Conner threw up during the game. Sure, it’s not ideal your starting quarterback threw up during a big game. However, he’s not the first player to throw up during a game, and he won’t be the last.

I saw Elko say it was a puke and rally. That’s exactly right. It’s no big deal he threw up. I don’t really care about it.

I do care about Conner’s total lack of accuracy. He threw some really bad passes all night.

Completing 12 of 30 passes for 100 yards with two interceptions with no touchdowns shows an issue with accuracy. Visually, some of his misses were really bad.

He looked like a pitcher who couldn’t throw strikes with his fastball. Instead of trying different pitches for strikes, he just kept humming fastballs, hoping the accuracy would find its way. It never did.

Early in the game, he made two throws to the running backs, but he just gunned the ball too far in front of them. Neither running back had a chance to catch the ball. Those should be pretty high-percentage completions.

On one of his interceptions, he completely missed Noah Thomas high, which wound up in the hands of the defense back. Noah had no chance at catching the ball even though he launched himself into the air. The ball still sailed over his hands. Conner completely missed him.

Conner didn’t have a super clean pocket, but it wasn’t like he was super pressured all night long, running for his life. He had time.

He was also staring down receivers like he’d already decided where the ball was going before the snap. Primarily to Cyrus Allen on quick throws.

That’s okay to do from time to time but it looked more like he couldn’t process the defense in real time. He was just going to a guy he hoped would be open based on pre-snap reads.

I have no idea what the issue was on Saturday night, but a game from his past has scared me.

Last week, I wrote that Conner played four full games against a Power 5 opponent. In those four games, he either threw for over 300 yards or under 200.

I was looking at those games as half-full glasses. The two games in which he threw for over 300 yards were the reality, not the games in which he threw for under 200 yards.

The game that scared me the most, which I didn’t talk about, is the 2022 Auburn game.

In that game, the Aggie offense had to punt on its first 10 possessions. We never even got into field goal range on our first 10 possessions. Ten possessions and 10 punts to start the game—that’s the definition of inept.

Auburn had a decent defense, but it wasn’t super elite. However, the Aggie offense was so inept that it couldn’t move the ball inside field goal range on 10 straight possessions to open the game.

That’s the famous game where Moose was suspended for wanting to wear sleeves.

We finally got a field goal attempt on our 11th possession, but that was because of a defensive interception in Auburn territory. On that 11th possession, we didn’t even get a first down. The offense went three and out, only kicking a field goal thanks to the field position the defense secured.

The definition of inept.

In that game, Conner was 14 of 36 for 121 yards. That’s less than a 40% completion rate.

After that game, I remember thinking, “A great quarterback somehow finds ways to make plays.” Conner certainly didn’t make plays that game, but I chalked it up to stupid Jimbo because of the Moose suspension. It seemed like the perfect comedy of ineptness Jimbo was proving to be good at.

I never put any of it at Conner’s feet. Maybe I should have. Maybe Conner struggles against better defenses.

Ironically, the next season, he got hurt against Auburn on the last offensive play of the first half. In that game, he was 8 of 14 for 70 yards. I remember watching that game and thinking he was struggling. Then he got hurt, and I just chalked it up to not getting a chance to play a full game. He would have lit it up in the second half.

It’s crazy to think the game against Notre Dame is a definitive game. However, if you look at his five and a half games against Power 5 opponents, the glass is definitely half empty. There might even be a leak.

He’s undoubtedly feast or famine at this point.

I’m not giving up on Conner, but he’s no longer getting a blind pass when the Aggie passing game struggles. The data suggests there’s a good chance he’s part of the problem.

I hope he turns it around, but the trend right now is a massive red flag.

Insane to think the guy everyone assumed would be the savior of Aggie football isn’t that savior.

Welcome to Aggie football.

Offensive Line:

The offensive line has been everyone’s biggest concern coming into this season.

However, most folks blamed it on Steve Addazio; everything would be fine.

Welp, Steve Addazio was nowhere near Kyle Field on Saturday night, and the offensive line still struggled.

Last week, I discussed the shuffling as a specific concern. Well, that happened on Saturday night. Some of it was due to Mark Nabou’s apparent injury, but even before he got hurt, they were shuffling people.

You can’t do that. As a coaching staff, you must decide on the five guys you think are the best unit and let it roll.

That’s apparently what Notre Dame did. I wasn’t explicitly watching their line, but they appear to have stuck with the five guys they deemed the starters for the last two weeks. They were young and inexperienced, but they were more effective than the Aggie offensive line.

The Aggie offensive line wasn’t horrible on Saturday night, but it seemed like a microcosm of the entire Aggie offense philosophy, which has no clear plan or identity.

Sometimes, they looked okay, and other times, they struggled to pass protect or blow Notre Dame off the ball. They certainly did not have an identity of what they wanted to do to the Notre Dame defense, which caused a lot of confusion and uncertainty at times.

I believe that’s mostly tied to confusion and uncertainty about who’s playing where.

Head Coach Mike Elko needs to instruct his offensive coordinator and offensive line coach to pick the best five guys for what they want to do and stick with them. There should be no more mixing and matching.

Not during the game and not during practice.

These are the starting five for at least the next four games. Let’s see if we can finally build cohesion on the offensive line.

Running Back:

Running back was exactly what I thought it would be. Decent enough, but nothing spectacular. Moss led the way with 20 carries for 72 yards and a touchdown.

My biggest beef with Moss was that midway through the fourth quarter, we had a third-and-9. Conner hit him on a short pass out of the backfield, and Moss stepped out one yard shy of the stick. He didn’t even fight for the extra yard to get the first down.

This is your feature back?

Middle of the 4th quarter in a tie game where conversions and possession matter and your lead back isn’t fighting for a first down?

In my mind, that’s more about coaching than Moss. He needs to be aware of what’s on the line and fight for it.

It’s more of an example of an offensive that has no clue about its identity. And that’s on coaching.

Daniels showed he still has his burst, and E.J. Smith looks like a nice change of pace.

I’ve said this unit won’t carry the team, and I still believe it. They do look serviceable, but the offensive line needs to be identified to help these guys.

Wide Receiver:

I was concerned about this unit coming into the season, but I saw nothing from them. I know Notre Dame has a good defense, and Conner struggled with his accuracy, but these guys did nothing to get open.

We had 12 completions for 100 yards. Our longest completion was for 18 yards to a tight end.

Remember when I said I’m tired of tight ends leading any portion of our receiving unit? Well, I’m still tired of it.

We never once tried a deep ball in a man-coverage situation. Motion is supposed to expose the defensive coverage, and we never once went for a big play.

We never tested the safeties and linebackers on seam routes down the middle of the field.

Is that a mark on the players or is it a lack of confidence by the offensive coaching staff with their personnel? I know Conner was bad but he never had a truly wide-open receiver down the field he completely whiffed on.

All of Conner’s misses were in traffic. Our receivers were not getting open either due to a lack of talent or poorly designed routes. Maybe both.

Like the running backs, I don’t expect much from this unit, but I was hoping for something different beyond their pre-snap motion.

Noah Thomas was in the slot most of the night. Maybe my assessment is wrong, but I feel he’s our most talented receiver. He needs to be on the outside looking for man coverage down the field. We need to see if he can be a guy that defenses have to account for on the outside.

We can put to bed whatever hope we had of Moose turning into a player under a different coaching staff.

New coaching staff and the same missing Moose.

Let’s move on.

Moose ain’t ever getting loose.

Defense:

Defensive Line:

The defensive line was expected to be the best unit of this Aggie team, and they certainly lived up to those expectations.

They were, far and away, the best unit of the Aggies on Saturday night.

They didn’t register any sacks, but that’s because Notre Dame smartly used the run and quick passes, so we never had a chance to tee off on Riley Leonard. They certainly applied pressure on passing plays.

The only thing I can say about this unit is a concern for defending the run. It’s not a massive knock but I think they’re so focused on just being disruptive they lose gap integrity on obvious running situations.

Notre Dame rolled up 214 yards on 34 carries. That’s an almost 6 yard per carry average. That was the difference in the game. There were two big touchdown runs but those tend to happen when a team is committed to leaning on the defensive line for much of the game.

I’m curious if better offensive lines will have even more success running the ball against this defense. Obviously, our inept offense allowed Notre Dame to stay committed to the run, but if there’s an apparent weakness on this defensive line, it’s defending the run.

One of the night’s biggest surprises for me was the play of Cashius Howell and Rylan Kennedy. I thought they looked outstanding in the snaps they got.

We knew our starters would be good, but it’s nice to see some apparent depth and talent to give those starters a break.

Linebacker:

I thought our linebackers were okay but not dominant. I know York blames himself for the missed tackle on the long touchdown run, but there were a lot of missed tackles on that run.

We rotated a lot of guys at the linebacker position all night so it was kind of tough for me to judge how they all performed.

I’m against mixing and matching the offensive line, but I’m okay with mixing and matching the linebackers based on what we expect the opponent to do coming into the game and what we see during the game.

Other than York, we’ve got three guys whose in-game ability we’re not really sure about, so it may take a little time to develop.

I think this unit’s whole existence this season will be spent cleaning up what the defensive line misses.

So, no matter who and how they play, they have to get better at tackling and staying in position.

Secondary:

This unit didn’t get tested thanks to A&M’s inept offense and Notre Dame’s smart offensive plan.

Notre Dame threw for 158 yards on 18 completions with a long pass of 20 yards.

I don’t think we can really judge this unit from this game.

Like I’m curious what an experienced offensive line that’s committed to the run will do against our defensive line, I’m also curious what a pass-happy offense will do against this secondary.

I still fear our corners are a liability, and an effective pass-happy team can light this secondary up.

I hope I’m wrong, but Notre Dame was definitely not an effective pass-happy team that put this secondary to the test.

Looking Forward:

I have no idea if A&M will rebound from this loss. I’d like to think we will, but I have no clue.

I know the 2012 team lost to Florida in their first game, but that loss felt different, and that team was totally different. It had loads of talent on offense and a ton of seniors on defense.

I remember seeing some flashes from Johnny that game. We certainly didn’t see flashes from Conner on Saturday night. I honestly don’t know how a quarterback can have that bad of a game and completely turn it around. It’s possible, but it’s going to be a massive concern right now.

I know the 2020 team struggled in its first game against Vandy, got soundly beaten by Bama, and then turned it around against Florida, never losing the rest of the way.

That team was also different in its third year with Jimbo. It had a senior offensive line with an experienced senior quarterback. It also had two really good running backs, Isiah Spiller and some guy named Devon Achane.

This 2024 team looks more like the other years that aren’t 2012 and 2020.

We’ll learn more about this team in two weeks against a very beatable Florida team. But it’s an SEC game on the road, which I don’t need to tell you about our current losing streak in those games.

I’m also slightly concerned about facing an actual Bobby Petrino offense in Arlington. We’ll learn more about them this week as they take on Oklahoma State, but Arkansas may not be an obvious win.

We have four games before Missouri comes to town, and that will be a much tougher game than people expect.

While Notre Dame might be one of the best defenses we face all season, I also think their offense will be one of the worst we see all season—at least of the SEC teams left on our schedule.

Our defense is going to face much bigger tests.

I still contend this feels like an 8-4 season. With the loss, we skew to the 6-6 side, not the 10-2 side.

We had an amazing night. Kyle Field was flat out rocking, and we could have made a statement. We did what Aggie Football has done in forever: We stubbed our toe.

It doesn’t mean our season is lost, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be concerned.

We just have to wait until September 14th to see another data point for this team.

Ramblings and Musings for the 2024 Aggies

You are about to read the ramblings and musings of an Aggie Football fan who has no clue what to expect for the 2024 season. I’m not putting on maroon-colored glasses or drinking that delicious maroon Kool-Aid. At least not yet.

I’ve been let down too many times by Aggie coaches and teams. I’m going into this season with open eyes and cautious optimism. I’m trying to be objective in terms of expectations.

Mainly because I don’t want to get hurt again. I’m tired of being hurt. Being hurt sucks.

I want to finally be lifted up by a coaching staff instead of dropped off a cliff. I want 2012 and 2020 Aggie Football. Not any of the other seasons between 2012 and now. Those seasons hurt me. Hurt me bad.

You may want to stop reading if you’re a fan of proper English-structured sentences and paragraphs. This is merely a stream of consciousness. If an eighth-grade English teacher was grading this, it would be graded an F.

I’m aware of that. I’m a Fightin’ Texas Aggie Football fan who doesn’t want to get hurt again.

I’m rambling and musing. Nothing more. Nothing less. I’m not structuring.

I’ll structure when this Aggie Football team proves to me it’s worth structuring.

Many people want to predict how things will go for the 2024 Fightin’ Texas Aggies.

I’m not one of them. I have NO CLUE what’s going to happen for the 2024 season. There’s just way too many variables.

I think the Aggies will be better than in 2023, but we have no clue. Nobody does. Any “analyst” who says they do is just guessing.

THEY’RE TAKING YOUR MONEY AND GUESSING! They’re like bandits on a train, taking your hard-earned cash and giving you a false sense of hope in return. Be careful with those analysts. They don’t really care about how you feel.

I, on the other hand, actually do.

Texas A&M Football has been a disappointment for the past three seasons. We had the blip in 2020, when we won the Orange Bowl, but then we have to go back to 2012 for the last great season.

So, for the past 12 seasons, 10 have been disappointments, and 2 have been pleasant surprises. Hope springs eternal, but history has a way of repeating itself.

Because of that, I don’t know what 2024 will bring.

The bones of this team are the team that lost to Oklahoma State in the Houston Bowl or whatever it’s called. Sorry. But that’s the honest baseline of where we’re starting from. That’s not the ideal situation. That game was a damn embarrassment despite an interim coaching staff and massive roster defections.

I know we’ve got an entirely new coaching staff. Half of our roster is also brand new, which we think is better than last year. But we have no real clue.

Here’s why: Short of maybe five players, we don’t have anyone who’s actually proven in the SEC for a full season. That includes Conner Weigman.

I absolutely LOVE Conner’s potential, but did you know he’s only started five games against Power 5 opponents? Did you know that in those five games, he’s only thrown for more than 300 yards twice?

To be fair, one of those starts was last year’s Auburn game, in which he was knocked out in the second quarter.

So, he’s only started four full games against Power 5 opponents, and he’s thrown for more than 300 yards in half of them.

Ironically, both were losses, but they were much more defensive than offensive losses. I’m talking about the 2022 Ole Miss game where Lane Kiffin ran Quinshon Judkins down D.J. Durkin’s throat. Meanwhile, Jimbo stood on the sideline with his finger in his nose, looking at his play sheet, clueless as to what was happening in the game. If only Jimbo had told Durkin to shut down the run.

Or at least put four down lineman and try.

Conner’s other loss with a 300-yard passing game was last year, where Miami exposed our weak secondary and lack of special teams preparation.

I don’t pin either of those losses on Conner.

He threw for 122 yards in the 2022 Auburn game and 155 yards in the 2022 LSU upset. Bet that LSU number surprised you. Nothing against Conner, as he made some great passes to Moose Muhammed, but that LSU game was won by Devon Achane and a key scoop and score by Demani Richardson.

Jimbo smartly put the ball in Achane’s hands to win that game. If only he’d done it in the last play against Bama that same year…

I do like the potential of Conner. The small sample set of his starts indicates if the Aggies can get some semblance of a defensive effort when he’s on his passing game, the Aggies can win football games.

I will skip the rest of the offense for now and talk about the defense.

That’s because everyone seems to know the 2024 Aggie offense is a massive question mark. Even the people with the thickest maroon-colored glasses and maroon Kool-Aid-stained upper lips know this offense is a massive question mark.

However, for some reason, everyone seems to think this Aggie defense will be some dominant unit.

I suppose that’s the Elko Effect, and it can’t be any worse than it was last year. I’m not totally sure about that last part.

We’re replacing three MASSIVE players on defense. McKinnley Jackson, Walter Nolen, and Edgerrin Cooper.

We all hate Walter Nolen because we think he’s a mercenary. The reality is he’s a damn good football player. He got paid by Ole Miss because he’s one of the top defensive tackles in the country. Sorry. It’s true. His loss creates an unknown hole at one of the most critical positions on the defense.

He and Jackson were quite the force in the middle of that defensive line. We lost a third-round NFL draft pick in Jackson and a potential first-round draft pick in Nolen. There’s no way to spin that. That’s a significant loss in the middle of our defensive line.

Couple that with the loss of Edge Cooper, who was All-SEC last season and was selected in the NFL draft’s second round.

We don’t have a linebacker who is anywhere close to what Edge Cooper brought to the field. I love Taurean York, but he’s nowhere near the physical player Edge was.

2023 Edge Cooper was probably the most dominant linebacker since Dat in 1998. We’ve had some decent linebackers between Dat and Edge, but 2023 Edge Cooper was a linebacking force.

Beyond York, we have a bunch of guys who never materialized at another SEC school, started for a smaller program, or just don’t have any experience. While we have some potential at linebacker, we won’t be near the level we had last season.

There’s no way to spin that, and despite what anyone says, our linebacker play will drop off from last season. Maybe it’s not a massive drop, but we have no clue about the drop-off level.

Back to the defensive line: I know we added Nick Scourton, who led the Big 10 in sacks last season. I know he looks like a beast. I do think he’s a beast, but we haven’t seen him play a full SEC season.

He did get 2 sacks against Michigan and 1 sack against Ohio State, but those were both blowout losses. I’m not sure if they were garbage sacks against second stringers or early sacks against both teams’ starters.

I hope he can duplicate last season’s performance in the SEC, but I don’t know for certain. The Big 10 is not the SEC.

As for the rest of the defensive line, we have the Shermar Brothers. They’re not actually brothers, but if you can keep them straight 100% of the time, that’s really impressive. Lord knows I get confused from time to time.

They both have flashed at times. We just haven’t seen them flash for four quarters over 8 SEC games. The potential is certainly there. However, those 32 quarters of football ain’t easy. Can they play dominant football for 32 quarters in the SEC?

Let’s start with 4 quarters against a very questionable Notre Dame offensive line.

Albert Regis and D.J. Hicks will man the other defensive tackle spot next to Shermar Turner. Regis was great in limited opportunities last season, and Hicks was a five-star recruit considered to be the best defensive lineman in the country two years ago.

The defensive line has a TON of potential and could certainly be better than last year. However, we are losing a third-round draft pick and a potential first-round draft pick. That’s a lot of talent to replace.

As for the secondary, this is the ultimate, “It can’t be worse than last season. Can it?”

I don’t think it can, but I don’t know that. The Aggie secondary was ATROCIOUS at defending balls in the air last season. Miami exposed it, and Bama confirmed it.

At that point, this defense was cooked for anyone with any level of quarterback and receiver play.

Elko replaced all the corners except for Tyreek Chappell, who returns for what feels like his 10th season.

Will Lee comes in from Kansas State. Everyone thinks he will be a shutdown corner, but the dude was playing in the Big 12 last season. Sure, it’s a pass-happy conference, but it’s not the SEC, where you’re going up against some of the best receivers in college football. You have to live on an island as an SEC corner.

Can he do that? We don’t know.

Dezz Ricks comes in from Bama with a ton of talent, but he never had significant playing time, which is how we enticed him to transfer. He was buried in the Bama depth chart, which, in theory, means that Bama has better corners in their two-deep than we have starting.

BJ Mayes comes from UAB, and Donovan Saunders comes from Cal Poly. UAB plays in Conference USA, and Cal Poly plays in the Big Sky Conference, which is an FCS conference.

So we have a guy who started at KSU, a guy who wasn’t in the two deep at Bama, a guy who played in Conference USA, and a guy who played in the Big Sky Conference to go with Tyreek Chappell.

We’ll find out real quick how good of a talent evaluator and developer Mike Elko is.

I’m not saying these guys can’t be good. My issue is that they lack the experience likely needed for a top-tier defense. People can spin this however they want, but I’m just trying to look at it objectively.

It’s not like Elko went out and got proven cornerbacks at the highest level. He’s rolling the dice on these guys being able to play in the SEC.

At safety, I think we’re fine. Bryce Anderson is a stud and I think Dalton Brooks will prove to be a really good safety paired with him.

I think they’ll find someone serviceable to pay the nickel depending on how things shake out at corner. That will come down to if Chappell plays nickel or corner.

I do believe Elko is a defensive genius, but you have to have talent to be a defensive genius. You can’t disguise a lack of talent against the best teams in the SEC. Those teams will find that weakness, and they will exploit that weakness. Even if Nick Saban is no longer in the league.

I think our defensive line has a chance to be slightly better than last season simply because they should be able to apply more pressure. I don’t know how they will hold up against the run for four quarters.

Hopefully, the linebackers will not drop off too much from last season, but there will be a drop-off. York will be better, but I don’t see anyone coming close to what Edge Cooper brought on the field last year

In the secondary, it’s a wild guess at this point. It certainly doesn’t seem like it can be worse. However, if these corners aren’t any better than last season, it really doesn’t matter. This defense will be a middle-of-the-pack defense, just like last year.

Now, back to the offense.

Ugh.

This is where it gets really bad.

We all want Conner to be the second coming of Johnny Manziel. I actually think Conner can be an overall better quarterback than Johnny.

There’s one massive difference – Johnny won the Heisman behind arguably the best line ever in college football and had guys like Mike Evans and Ryan Swope to throw to.

Conner doesn’t have anything remotely close to what Johnny had.

His offensive line has one returning starter in the position they played last year. I love Trey Zuhn’s heart, but he’s a far cry from Luke Joeckel and Jake Matthews. Zuhn is the most proven commodity on our offensive line. Read that again.

One proven guy on the offensive line.

I know everyone likes to blame Addazio, but this offensive line lacks talent and, at best, SEC experience.

Cushing seems like a solid offensive line coach and will be an improvement over Addazio, but let’s not act like Addazio was screwing up the 2012 and even the 2020 Aggie offensive line. This unit has a massive talent and experience deficit from those teams.

Bisontis looks like he’ll start at left guard, which should be a much better position than right tackle. He still needs some experience at left guard.

The Utah transfer, or Mark Nabou, will start at center. I like Nabou, and the Utah guy started 8 games for Utah last season. At least he has some starting experience in what was a Power 5 conference, but we’ve never seen either of these guys have significant playing time in the SEC.

The Kansas transfer is starting at either right guard or right tackle. He should be fine, but once again, he hasn’t played in the SEC. We have no clue if his skill set transfers to taking on the best defensive linemen in college football week in and week out.

The Big 12 isn’t known for elite-level talent on their defensive lines.

I have no clue what happens at right tackle because it seems like there’s no obvious starter. Neither Crownover nor Fatheree grabbed the position, so I think they’re just going to get equal playing time to see if one takes it.

If not, Reed-Adams (the Kansas transfer) will move out to right tackle, which isn’t really his natural position. This means we have to backfill the starting right guard spot.

None of this is ideal.

Spin Addazio sucks, and Cushing is a better coach all you want. There are four big question marks heading into a season of SEC football on the offensive line.

You want positions set with guys that have experience on the offensive line. That’s not the 2024 Aggie offensive line. Not even close.

This is a MASSIVE red flag heading into the season.

Maybe this could be like the 2020 offensive line, but those guys were all seniors who played a lot of seasons together and finally gelled. The guy who wasn’t a senior was a future first-round draft pick in Kenyon Green.

One of these lines is not like the other.

I’m sorry. I’m not buying into any serviceable offensive line until I see them perform as a unit. We’ll find out a lot in Game 1 against Notre Dame.

The questions don’t get any better at wide receiver.

We don’t have a single receiver we can project out over an 8 game SEC season. They’re all unproven. Every one of them.

I will say next to Conner, Noah Thomas is the biggest variable to the success of the 2024 Aggies.

Noah needs to be the Robin to Conner’s Batman. The Cher to Conner’s Sonny. The honey cinnamon butter to Conner’s Texas Roadhouse rolls.

That’s right. Noah Thomas is THAT important to the success of the 2024 Fightin’ Texas Aggie offense. Outside of Conner playing all 12 games, I honestly think Noah is the swing guy between 6 wins and 10 wins.

He has game-changing talent but hasn’t been able to stay healthy over an entire season.

If he can stay healthy and play to his talent, we’ve got a legit downfield receiving threat defenses have to worry about. We haven’t had that since Josh Reynolds.

I love Ainias Smith, but he was a slot guy who needed the ball in space. I’m talking about a true down the field he’s got man coverage, so just throw it deep because he’s going to beat the defender for the ball receiver.

That’s been a missing piece in Aggie Football for a good six seasons.

I’ll go even further and say that Noah Thomas is the most critical player of the Elko Era. We’ve struggled to recruit true stud receivers since Jimbo got here. We had a couple of headcases in Demond Demas and Evan Stewart, but we haven’t had a true stud receiver that just went out and made plays since Josh Reynolds.

We certainly haven’t had a Christian Kirk and nothing near a Mike Evans. Our receiving corps has been really putrid for the last decade.

We need a receiver to show that A&M can develop wide receivers in college football and get them to the next level in the NFL. I don’t blame stud receivers for going elsewhere right now. They want to get to the next level, but A&M hasn’t produced those receivers in some time.

We need Noah Thomas to break that trend. He’s that important of a guy to the success of Aggie football this season and beyond.

Besides Noah, we have Jahdae Walker, who struggled with drops in the first half of last season but seemed to get better in the second half. Hopefully, he will continue on the uptrend and not revert back to dropping balls. At best, he’s a number two receiver, though.

We still have the great enigma in Moose Muhammad. All I want for Moose is to be a really good third receiver and make 5-10 big plays this season. I’d love for him to be a consistent game-in and game-out receiver, but I think that’s asking too much.

Cyrus Allen comes over as a big play threat from Louisiana Tech. I don’t know if he can elevate that to SEC play. I hope he can.

Micah Tease was a 4-star recruit but didn’t play much at receiver last year. He didn’t catch a single pass until the Texas Bowl. The talent is there. The experience and production is not.

Izaiah Williams is a true freshman and a four-star recruit out of Tampa. He’s basically Micah Tease without a year of exposure to big-time college football.

Holman Wiggins should be a massive upgrade at receiver coach over Dameyune Craig. Craig was a terrible wide receiver coach.

There’s undoubtedly some talent at receiver, but it’s SORELY lacking proof of production. I’m hoping Wiggins can leverage these guys’ talent into a legit wide receiving corps.

It won’t be like Ohio State or even Texas’ unit from last season, but I do hope it can be as good as Bama’s from last season.

I have big questions about running back, as well. Obviously, the loss of Reueben Owens is huge, but even with him, I’d have questions.

Our three best running backs over the last decade have been Trayveon Williams, Isiah Spiller, and Devon Achane.

There’s a massive difference between those three guys and the four running backs on our roster, including Owens. All three of those guys consistently produced as a true freshman.

You can’t say that about Owens, Moss, and Daniels. I know Owens is lost for the regular season, but just trying to point out the difference between our current roster and those that have produced in the past.

The best three guys over the last decade produced from day one. We can’t say that about the 2024 Aggie running back group, even with a healthy Owens.

With the loss of Owens, we’re woefully thin from a depth standpoint but also thin from a talent standpoint.

I think Moss, Daniels, and EJ Smith can be serviceable backs, but they won’t take over games. I don’t see any of these guys doing what Devon Achane did against LSU in 2022 or Isaiah Spiller in the 2020 Florida game.

Those two guys exerted their will in those games and carried the Aggies to victory.

Moss has the most talent of the three remaining guys. He’s certainly capable of having good games, but I don’t think he’s capable of flat-out putting the team on his back.

Collin Klein loves to use a tight end in multiple ways. Ben Sinnott was one of the best tight ends in the country at Kansas State last season. He had 49 catches for 676 yards and 6 touchdowns.

That’s good for a tight end. However, I don’t want that production leading our receiving unit. We had enough of tight ends leading our receiving unit under Jimbo.

Nobody loves a tight end more than Aggie fans, but tight ends should only complement the overall offense. We’re in massive trouble if a tight end is our leading receiver.

With all of this said this offensive can be very productive. However, I don’t see it being dominant. For it to be productive, all units will have to produce, to the best of their ability, game in and out.

There’s no margin for error with this offense.

If one of the units struggles against a defense, then this offense will be sunk for that game. We don’t have the talent for one unit to disappear in a game and still produce more points than the defense gives up.

At least not against the better teams on our schedule.

There’s just not enough talent and experience on the offensive side of the ball, except for Conner and Noah. At least from a talent standpoint with those two.

There is one more wild card on offense: true freshman Terry Bussey. Bussey was recruited as a corner, but his position is still in flux. We appear to have depth at corner, and it’s tough for a true freshman to play corner in the SEC.

Bussey was a dynamic offensive player in high school, so he’s been taking snaps on the offensive side of the ball. That’s a clear sign that we lack offensive playmakers.

If Bussey can have an Ainias Smith-type true freshman year or, even better, a Christian Kirk-type true freshman year, that will be a massive boost to the Aggie offense.

So what does all of this mean from a record standpoint, and can we beat Notre Dame?

Well, Vegas thinks we can beat Notre Dame, and I do, too. I have a feeling it’s going to be an ugly game.

I think it will come down to which field goal kickers make field goals, which punters keep the opponents deep in their own territory, and which offense scores a touchdown longer than 50 yards.

It won’t be exciting football if you like a lot of points.

I’ll take an ugly Aggie win over an exciting football game with lots of points any day of the week.

Because of the inexperience on both offensive lines, I think both head coaches are going to use their defense to try and make the other offense make mistakes.

I don’t know who has the better defense and the worst offensive line between these two teams. I hope it’s the Aggies on Saturday night who have the better defense and offensive line. I certainly think the Aggies can win.

As for the rest of the season, nobody can have any idea until that Notre Dame game is done. We need to see some real football first.

I feel like the floor is 6-6 and the ceiling is 10-2. That leads me to believe we’ll settle in around 8-4 if I had to bet right now.

I would love for us to be 10-2, but that’s going to require everyone staying healthy and the offensive unit playing to perfection for the 9 games against Power 5 teams. That seems like a tall task.

If we do go 8-4, I sure hope two wins are at Kyle with the four marquee games we have at Kyle. It would be super depressing to go 8-4 with all four losses being at Kyle. It’s a huge benefit to have our toughest four games at home but we have to win a couple of them for it to matter.

Losing at Kyle is the worst. It really hurts recruiting because that’s where you need to shine. Recruits need to experience what Kyle Field can be.

It’s a weird schedule that nobody can predict at this point. Let’s get through Notre Dame and go from there.

See y’all at Kyle Field on Saturday night.

BTHO Notre Dame!

A Month of Mike Elko

In my initial analysis of Mike Elko after his firing, I stated I felt the Aggies finally got the hire right. This was after four failed attempts with Fran, Sherman, Sumlin, and Jimbo. I’m going to retract the statement I think we finally hired the right guy.

I’m not retracting my statement because Elko was a bad hire. I’m retracting my statement because I have no idea if Mike Elko will be successful at Texas A&M. We all HOPE Elko was the right hire, but nobody has any real clue if he was the right hire or not at this point. Everybody is just guessing.

We all know Mike Elko appears to be a tried and true football coach. He doesn’t seem to be some slick salesman or some dude who has ridden a hot hand he didn’t have much to do with.

Mike Elko has got to where he is because he’s a tried and true football coach. He’s a football coach above everything else. That I don’t question.

I believe Mike Elko can succeed at Texas A&M, but I wonder if he will be. I’m looking at Mike Elko with a more objective lens than I did with the previous coaches. I drank the Maroon Kool-Aid way too early with Fran, Sumlin, and Jimbo.

What’s the saying? Fool me once; shame on me. Fool me three times; shame on you, Aggie Football head coach, hiring decision-makers.

Like the coaches before him, Mike Elko will be judged on the 12-game schedule and whatever bowl games he attends. The offseason matters, but it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme. The off-season, including signings and practices, is fodder until the games are played.

What matters for Mike Elko is how many wins and losses he’ll have over the next few years. That’s impossible to predict right now.

The biggest epiphany in changing my mind about how I see Elko came the night of the Texas Bowl. Many folks will say it’s a meaningless bowl game, but I’m afraid I have to disagree after watching it.

My greatest takeaway in watching that game was the massive talent deficiency of the Aggies. It was MASSIVE.

Sure, the excuse is there were quite a few injuries, opt-outs, and folks entering the transfer portal. That’s right, but most folks are missing the point – This is the base from which Elko has to work. We lost to a pretty bad Oklahoma State team that night. We lost because we had a severe talent deficiency.

I know we lost our third-string quarterback on the first play, but our cornerbacks got worked by a pedestrian set of receivers and quarterback. Our defensive line and linebackers got very little pressure. We did an excellent job of slowing Oklahoma State’s running game, but the pass defense is a massive concern for me going into 2024.

Offensively, we did decent passing the ball but struggled to establish the running game. Our running backs combined for 15 carries and 47 yards. That’s slightly better than three yards per carry. That’s not a great Oklahoma State defense, and we couldn’t establish the run.

We were down most of the game, so we had no choice but to make up ground through the air. I still would have liked to have seen us establish the run. We abandoned it too soon, but what little we did run could have been more impressive, so that could be a reason.

While 372 yards of passing isn’t terrible, I’d like to present two stats: 1) No passing touchdowns and 2) Max Wright had the longest pass completion of 40 yards.

That isn’t a knock on Max Wright. He’s a good football player who embodies what a Fightin’ Texas Aggie should be. The problem is Max Wright is a tight end and not what one would call a passing threat. This is the second game in a row where he’s had the longest pass completion.

That’s a massive concern for me regarding our receiving corps. It needs to be discussed because there are some plays where these guys flash, but this receiving corps, as it stands right now, is pedestrian. I’m serious. We continue to need more elite-level receivers.

Ainias Smith is the lone exception to the receivers in the six years Jimbo was at the helm. I don’t see that changing anytime soon. You must have receivers who can take on the best secondaries to excel in college football. The Aggies still need to be elite through the air right now.

We can move the ball at times, but for the most part, we can’t routinely press secondaries with our receiving corps. That has got to change and change quickly. I don’t see it happening, though.

Coming out of the Texas Bowl against a VERY beatable Oklahoma State, I have these concerns:
1) An inability to bring pressure by the defensive front.
2) Can’t cover at all.
3) Can’t establish the running game.
4) Receivers can’t consistently dominate.

Other than that, it wasn’t all that bad…

That was not a meaningless bowl game. It was an eye-opener to where things stand with the Aggie football program. It’s not good.

Many of you think Elko will fix it with the transfer portal. While I will give Elko credit, he’s doing everything he can via the transfer portal. However, I equate it to an NFL expansion team trying to bolster its roster via the expansion draft. It really is.

Mike Elko is going to sign roughly 20 guys from the transfer portal. 25% of his scholarship roster will be guys from the transfer portal.

These aren’t SEC starters are even SEC two deep guys he’s signing. Most of these guys are coming from non-Power 5 conferences. They have yet to face elite talent like they’ll be facing in the SEC. They’re all going to go through a massive learning curve if they actually survive the learning curve.

One guy can be an immediate contributor, and that’s the defensive end from Purdue, who led the Big 10 in sacks last season. He looks like the real deal and an excellent get from the transfer portal.
Other than him, these guys have yet to produce much in a major conference.

I like the corner from Kansas State, but we’ll see if his skills transfer to a more physical league with better overall talent.

The rest of these transfers? There are a couple of guys with promise, but I have a question on whether they’re that much better than the guys they will try to replace.

Why does this worry me? The top teams in college football don’t have to load up in the transfer portal. The argument will be they don’t have to because they’re a good football team. That is precisely my argument. They’re not coming off a 5-7 and 7-6 season. Texas A&M has a losing record over the last two seasons.

A&M has received a bad rap related to the transfer portal over the last two years, but you can’t objectively deny that flipping over a roster every year is not the recipe for success. You should use the transfer portal to add talent in critical areas. You shouldn’t use the transfer portal to replace 25% of your roster in one season.

That’s where Texas A&M is right now. Our depth and a few critically talented individuals have left the program. Elko is forced to fill the roster with people from the transfer portal.

I’m sorry. That’s just not ideal.

I fully get the argument Elko is trying to mold the roster with “his guys.” The problem is we are still determining if Elko can truly identify and develop talent. We don’t know that, as there’s no track record of him doing it.

We have two seasons of Mike Elko at Duke, where he went 8-4 and 7-5. That’s pretty decent for Duke, but he also coached in what could be the worst Power 5 conference. I know he lost his quarterback for parts of this season, but didn’t Jimbo lose his quarterback as well?

Why do we give Elko the benefit of the doubt in losing his quarterback but not Jimbo? I’m not defending Jimbo. I just want a head coach where we don’t have to routinely defend the loss of our starting quarterback for the win-loss record.

What Elko did at Duke is impressive, but it’s not like he won the ACC or even a division. His time at Duke is promising, but it’s certainly not definitive for having success at Texas A&M.

As for the 2024 schedule, it is easier because Alabama isn’t on it. However, the Saban news changes that. The 2024 schedule is still a big challenge for a team with around 40% of its scholarships filled with guys who have never taken a snap for the Aggies. I’m including the high school signees and the transfer portal guys in that number.

FORTY PERCENT OF THE ROSTER WILL HAVE NEVER TAKEN A SNAP IN AN AGGIE UNIFORM.

I’m sorry. That’s not ideal.

Elko is bringing in a ton of guys, hoping and praying they can fill half a dozen starting spots if not more. That’s roughly 25% of the starting spots. He needs transfer players to win the job and then play at a high level to win ten games.

I don’t see that happening in Mike Elko’s first year. That doesn’t mean he can’t be successful long term, but it’s much easier to be successful in college football with some early excitement from a coaching staff that wins football games.

This will be more of an 8-4 team in 2024.

When we fired Jimbo, I thought the right coach could come in and win right away with our roster. Mike Elko has decided to take a different approach and turn this into a 2-3 year build. If that pays off, I’m good with it, but I have massive questions right now.

While the transfer portal is new, Mike Elko is attempting to do something that nobody else is doing. I don’t know of any other team overhauling 40% of their roster in a single season. It’s a bold move, for sure.

Once the final roster is set with transfer portal players and the final signing class is done, I’ll look at how the team shapes up.

I believe we’ll be worse off going into the 2024 season than in 2023. I hope I’m wrong, but after watching the Texas Bowl and realizing what Elko is doing with the roster, I have some concerns about what Aggie Football is capable of in 2024.

The Aggies have to compete with all of college football, and if you accurately compare where things stand right now, it could be better. In a vacuum, it seems exciting to get all new players. There are concerns when you compare it to the rest of college football.

Only time will tell if those concerns are real.

We Finally Got Our Guy

The Aggies hired Mike Elko on Monday, November 27, 2023, but not without a major fiasco.

We’ll get to Mike Elko in a bit, but let’s first go through the fiasco that was the hiring process.

All reports led into last weekend that Texas A&M was finally conducting an actual hiring process for their head coach. For the first time since Jackie Sherrill, the powers that be appeared to be considering a lot of potential coaches rather than starting with the end already known.

In my last blog post, I mentioned how every hire since Jackie Sherrill resulted in the most obvious hire with no apparent due diligence into that coach and any other candidates.

In Monday’s press conference after introducing Mike Elko, Ross Bjork indicated at least 30 potential coaches had been considered in some form, shape, or fashion. That doesn’t mean they interviewed or talked to 30 coaches; it just means many coaches were considered.

That sounds like a wonderful coaching search.

The rumored plan headed into the last regular season of college football was there were some key targets, and Saturday’s games needed to be played to see if that changed any interest in coaches on the coach’s side or A&M’s side.

Once again, this is a wonderful plan for a coaching search. We’ve got a little time, so let’s wait one more weekend to see if someone has a different level of interest once their season ends and they have no shot at the College Football Playoff. Or at least a minimal shot after losing in a rival game.

It seemed that the Aggies would make a very well-thought-out and intelligent hire.

Wellllllllllllllllllllll, on Saturday night around 8:48 p.m., the wheels didn’t just fall off the coaching search wagon; they blew up like a 90s-era Ford Explorer and turned the coaching search wagon completely upside down.

Reports started flowing out that the Aggies and Mark Stoops agreed for him to become the new Aggie head coach. His name surfaced late Friday night on the Internet and Saturday morning during the pre-game shows, but nobody thought it was real.

Based on what I can tell, Billy Liucci with TexAgs was the first to say anything at 8:48 p.m. He posted this on his premium forum, so it wasn’t technically public knowledge. I’m not a premium subscriber, so I didn’t see it, but I was sent what was posted. Liucci never publicly Tweeted anything, but when he breaks something that big in his premium forum, it’s basically public information.

Mark Passwaters, another well-connected reporter following Aggie sports, publicly Tweeted at 8:51 that Mark Stoops looked like the next Aggie head coach “barring a last-minute collapse.” By this time, every national reporter was also Tweeting that Mark Stoops was all but officially the next head football coach at Texas A&M.

The Mark Stoops to Aggieland train was running full steam down the tracks.

Social media lit up with Aggies everywhere, including players, ridiculing the hire. I mean, it just absolutely blew up. This is the first time I’ve seen something like it where there wasn’t an Aggie to be found that was supportive of the hire.

Many sports reporters were questioning the hire, but Aggies everywhere were lambasting the hire. And for good reason.

My cell phone blew up from friends, but I found it hard to believe. Surely, the powers that be weren’t that stupid. I’ll get to why hiring Mark Stoops made no sense later, but I couldn’t believe we would fire Jimbo Fisher to hire Mark Stoops.

It seemed real, but it also seemed odd.

I was pretty tired from a full day of watching college football, so I went to bed around 10:30, assuming/hoping I would wake up to different news. Luckily, that was the case, but let me finish how the night played out.

At 10:48 p.m., Brent Zwerneman of the Houston Chronicle Tweeted, “Any reports that say Mark Stoops to Texas A&M is a done deal are premature and inaccurate.”

Precisely two hours after Billy Liucci posted it looked like Mark Stoops would be the next head coach; a very well-connected Brent Zwerneman said reports of Mark Stoops were inaccurate. Now, mind you, Brent jumped on the Stoops to Aggieland train an hour before, saying it was also a done deal.

Somewhere along the way, I feel like there were reports that Mike Elko had told the Duke administration he would be staying at Duke. All signs pointed to Mark Stoops getting the Aggie gig.

What happened in that hour that Brent posted Stoops was coming, and then he wasn’t, I have no idea. Brent changed course quickly.

Brent has a connection at the highest level of Texas A&M. I don’t have proof of it, but Brent has broken some pretty big news related to Texas A&M. He would also officially announce the hire of Mike Elko the next day before anyone else.

Brent is connected.

When Brent Tweeted out the news it was premature, I believe it slowed down the train, but you don’t stop trains. They have to roll to a stop over a pretty good distance. The Mark Stoops train kept moving, and people’s fury had not fully calmed down.

At 11:16 p.m., a Kentucky reporter tweeted that Mark Stoops was staying in Kentucky. At 11:20 p.m., Billy Liucci confirmed that report. It looked like the Mark Stoops train to A&M was stopped and not going anywhere.

At 12:02 a.m., Mark Stoops tweeted that he had listened to a potential opportunity but would stay at Kentucky. He never denied the reports or consideration. That’s key, which I’ll get to later.

If you still couldn’t believe the reporters, the man himself had spoken, he wouldn’t be the next Aggie head coach. He never stated the specific school, but what he talked about was obvious.

What a WILD 3 hours that was. The Mark Stoops era at Texas A&M will be any Aggie head coach’s shortest but most exciting tenure. Maybe he wasn’t officially the head coach, but three very well-connected reporters all reported it was all but a done deal waiting on official approval.

So What the Hell Happened?:

Only a few people know what happened, but it’s possible to piece together what likely happened.
I do not know Ross Bjork led this, but Ross Bjork has never denied that Mark Stoops was a finalist. In his press conference on Monday, Ross Bjork stated he didn’t know how the reports got out and that the list of finalists and the finalist was “fluid.”

He never mentioned Mark Stoops by name, but he also never denied that final terms were being discussed with Mark Stoops. He also never said Mike Elko was the clear finalist heading into Saturday evening. He simply said everything on Saturday evening was “fluid.” That’s a non-denial if I’ve ever heard one.

So, the rest of what you’re about to read is all speculation on my part, but I have a solid basis for my speculation.

Ross Bjork seemed to be working independently or with a few people and had decided on Mark Stoops as the next Aggie head coach.

The problem appears to be that Bjork hadn’t informed enough of the folks who would make the final approval to see their thoughts. In the couple of hours of this going public, final approvers made their intentions known internally that they would disapprove of Mark Stoops as the head coach of Texas A&M.

I don’t specifically know who those people are, but it’s safe to assume those people have some combination of money and power. Certainly more than Ross Bjork.

Some of it might have been the public sentiment in those couple of hours, but if the news of Mark Stoops being the finalist had not been made public, I still don’t think it would have been approved. It was unanimous and widespread amongst Aggies that Mark Stoops was not the answer to the current issues with Aggie Football.

The exact time of death is up for debate, but the death of the Mark Stoops era at Texas A&M was between 10:48 p.m. on November 25, 2023, and 12:02 a.m. on November 26, 2023.

Like a rocket headed out of the Earth’s atmosphere, it didn’t last long, but it was full of energy. That was the Mark Stoops era at Texas A&M.

It’ll go down in Aggie legend.

Like most things on social media, the good news is that it’s all but gone and forgotten now. Sure, it’ll get brought back up occasionally, but it was so short and chaotic, along with nailing the Elko hire shortly after that, that it’s a mere blip.

It was an embarrassing blip by certain Aggie leaders, but it’s still a blip.

The future of Aggie Football lies with Mike Elko and his ability to win football games.

What the Hell Was Bjork Thinking?:

Nobody knows, including Ross Bjork. Whatever happened on Saturday night, Bjork dropped Mark Stoops like a hot potato. Stoops may say he declined, but final approval for him to decline was never coming. It could be an exercise in semantics that he removed his name from consideration before the final decision was made. Still, Mark Stoops never got an official offer to come to Aggieland.

The Mark Stoops to Aggieland train only has Bjork and I’m guessing, a couple of other ill-informed folks. I don’t know how many, but I don’t think Bjork had decided and started negotiating with Stoops in a vacuum. If that’s true, it’s even scarier Bjork thought he had that level of autonomy in this search.
I wonder how Bjork could conclude that Mark Stoops was the best candidate for Texas A&M.

I get guys like Dan Lanning, Ryan Day, and Kalen DeBoer weren’t coming to Aggieland. You do your due diligence and ensure there’s no possibility first. You start with the most proven and successful, even if their tenure as head coach is short. They’ve all accomplished more than Mark Stoops has, as they’ve all made it to conference championship games or better.

There’s a LONG list of coaches between those three guys and Mark Stoops.

Mike Elko, Elijah Robinson, and Jed Fischer were all rumored to be under strong consideration. Those guys are light years ahead of Mark Stoops for the Aggie job.

If Bjork wanted a sitting SEC head coach, the obvious hire was Lane Kiffin. I know people don’t like Lane Kiffin, but the dude would have won football games at Texas A&M. Winning cures everything, so Aggie fans would have gotten over Kiffin as their coach in short order. Kiffin would have taken the job as well.

In addition to Kiffin, Eli Drinkwitz should have been considered before Mark Stoops. I think Drinkwitz would have considered leaving Missouri for A&M. Those SEC head coaches are infinitely more qualified for the Aggie job than Mark Stoops.

How Bjork settled on Mark Stoops is beyond me and everyone I’ve read or talked to. Stoops has done well at Kentucky, but he hasn’t exactly killed it in Lexington. He has a losing record in the SEC and has spent 12 seasons in the SEC East, a much weaker division than the West. He should have a winning record in the SEC East, even at Kentucky, if he’s a great coach.

He’s never taken Kentucky to Atlanta for the SEC Championship or played in a New Year’s Six bowl game. He’s made Kentucky relevant and competitive in football, but he’s not excelled as their head coach.

The only thing I can think that swayed Bjork to settle on Stoops is that he’s a sitting SEC head coach. That does look like a strong move, but we saw what happened with Dan Mullen going from Mississippi State to Florida. That only sometimes works out.

If you want to play conspiracy, Bjork and Stoops briefly crossed paths in Miami in 2003. They may have made a personal connection there. Sports is a ton about personal relationships when it comes to hiring.

Maybe Bjork, like Scott Woodward before him, who hired his buddy, Jimbo, wanted to hire someone he knew well. He wouldn’t be the first, and he wouldn’t be the last.

If you want to go further down the conspiracy hole, both Bjork and Stoops are repped by Jimmy Sexton. Jimmy Sexton represents some of the top names in college football, so that he may have offered advice in Bjork’s ear.

I’ve tried to figure out what Bjork was thinking, but I can’t. I think Bjork is just an idiot.

Sure, he comes across looking and talking the part, but remember he was the Athletic Director at Ole Miss when all the Hugh Freeze stuff went down. He and the Ole Miss administration completely botched that. They had to fire Hugh Freeze because a lawsuit they created produced records showing Freeze had called an escort service from a University phone.

Bjork has gotten his head coach (Freeze) fired, thanks to a decision he was part of. He can add Mark Stoops to a head coach decision that was blown up when he brought it for final approval. Bjork’s track record could be better.

Once again, this is all speculation on my part with Bjork’s involvement, but it seems like he was leading the Mark Stoops decision with little feedback.

There’s nothing “fluid” about a list of finalists in a coaching search like this. Sure, there’s a little uncertainty, but at some point, you nail down your finalist and get them. It seems apparent that Stoops was Bjork’s finalist, but he quickly learned nobody else felt the same.

We’ll likely find out in the next 12-24 months if this is the case. If this wasn’t Bjork’s doing, he’ll remain the Aggie AD for a good period. The sports that matter are in good hands with good coaches. We need deep post-season runs by those sports other than one season for baseball, but the Aggie athletic department is humming along thanks to ticket sales and large donations.

I believe we’ll see Bjork move on within the next 12 months and Justin Moore promoted to Athletic Director. At this point, Bjork has lost all faith with the Aggie faithful. It will take some deep post-season runs in football, basketball, and baseball for him to win some favor back.

How Did We Get Mike Elko?:

This is all speculation as well, but after Bjork recommended the hiring of Mark Stoops, the powers that be told him to get Elko and be done with the coaching search. Don’t screw it up any worse than what you’ve already done.

When Mark Stoops was recommended and blown up, there were two choices:
1) Reset the whole process.
2) Make the most apparent hire right away, which was Elko.

I was leaning to number one on Sunday morning mainly because I needed to learn how botched things were. After seeing the results, I fully agree that number two was the proper path.

There was no need to complicate the process and make it worse. Who knows what coaches on the “fluid list” were still interested after learning about Mark Stoops and the blowback?

Mike Elko was the guy to get at that point. And we went and got him.

I’d like to know if initially focusing on Mark Stoops over Mike Elko costs us another million per year and an additional year on the contract. We could have had Mike Elko for five years at $30 million had he been the main target when the key games were done on Saturday. Instead, we gave him a six-year contract for $42 million.

It’s not a terrible contract based on the current market, but I was surprised to see the annual salary and length of the deal. Hopefully, it’s a moot point, and we’re not wondering if Ross Bjork cost us a few million thanks to his idiocy.

Is Mike Elko a Good Hire?:

After all the dust settled, Mike Elko was the best hire. I’m confused that Mark Stoops was even on the “fluid list” of finalists. I wonder how anyone could think Stoops was a better hire than Elko. It makes no sense.

Moving on from Stoops, I like Elko over Dan Lanning, Ryan Day, Kalen DeBoer, Jed Fisch, and even Kyle Whittingham, who entered the process late with sincere interest.

Lane Kiffin is the only other coach who would have been a great hire, but I get perception wouldn’t have allowed it.

I love the Elko hire for a host of reasons.

First off, he’s a football coach through and through. Not just some Xs and Os genius but a dude who understands the game of football from the players, the program, and the plays. His two years at Duke were fantastic; he learned much about being a head coach. He’s a more well-rounded football coach than when he left Texas A&M. It’s almost like we sent him to finishing school for two years.

In addition, Elko is young and hungry.

This is the thing we missed the most on Jimbo. Jimbo is a football coach but wasn’t hungry when we hired him.

Jimbo’s problem was he was so focused on making his offense work in today’s game that he wouldn’t evolve. He didn’t have to because he had a national championship and a massive guaranteed contract. He could dig in trying to make his offense work because he didn’t have to worry about anything from an accomplishment or monetary standpoint. Sure, he ruined his legacy at two schools, but he’s got a national championship ring and earned well over $100 million in his career. Jimbo wanted to prove a point rather than evolve because he wasn’t hungry for success.

Elko appears to be the exact opposite. Sure, he’s got a fat contract that can take care of a few generations, but he hasn’t won anything on the football field as a head coach. What he did at Duke the last two seasons is impressive, but in the grand scheme, it’s not much.

Mike Elko has a good decade or two of coaching football in front of him. He’s got an incentive-based contract where he can make more money than his base salary if he wins a national championship. He has all the world’s motivation to succeed at Texas A&M.

He’s only two seasons removed from the Aggie program, so he has more familiarity than any potential head coach. Elijah Robinson has the most, but he would never be the head coach with Elko in the mix. Elko makes more sense than Robinson because he’s done it for a couple of seasons.

Elko’s familiarity with the Aggie program is going to pay massive dividends. We’ve already seen it with the team and recruiting. In the first few days since his announcement, there has yet to be a mass exodus to the transfer portal or de-commitments in recruiting. Sure, some players are likely going to transfer, and maybe a couple of kids will de-commit, but by and large, it looks like the players are committed to keeping this thing together.

That is HUGE because this Aggie team is loaded with talent. This isn’t a rebuild job. This isn’t a head coach driving the program into the ground, and the next coach has to rebuild everything. This is a situation where a head coach needs to walk in and keep the train on the track while making some modifications so the train runs better.

This team was a few points away from playing in Atlanta this season. The talent is there, and it’s clear that Elko’s familiarity with the players is a massive asset.

Beyond the players, Mike Elko knows the administration to a large degree. There have been some changes in two years, but for the most part, Mike Elko has a good idea of who does what from an administration standpoint. He doesn’t have to sit in his office wondering who to contact when he needs something. He already has a good idea, which will make his transition easier.

His family’s familiarity with College Station is also a positive. They likely have friends with whom they can plug back in and know where they want to live. We forget coaches are people with family that need to be taken care of. I’m sure Elko’s wife and kids can go about their way and not spend a lot of time adjusting to a new place.

That saves Elko from worrying about them.

I have no idea how successful Elko will be at Texas A&M. Nobody does. I’m not foolish enough to think he will win repeated national championships. He’s in a position to appear in the College Football Playoff, and that’s all you can ask for.

Most people have not realized it, but a MASSIVE change is coming to college football next season. The Big 10 and SEC are doing away with divisions, and the playoff is expanding to 12 teams.

For Texas A&M, that’s a massive gain because everything doesn’t go through Tuscaloosa and Atlanta anymore. Even if Nick Saban continues to dominate, it’s not our most significant issue. We can still carve a path to the College Football Playoff, which will be a massive step for the program.

Don’t get me wrong, I want to supplant Alabama and Georgia in the SEC, but that’s a tall order for next season. From day one, Mike Elko has a much easier path to college football relevance than in years past.
I’m bullish on the future of Aggie Football. Only time will tell if I’m right. I hope I’m finally right because I missed on Fran, Sumlin, and Jimbo. I was right on Sherman from the start.

I bought into the hype early on with the other three and thought each guy would return Aggie Football to national relevance. They had a blip of a great season but failed to do more over their entire tenure. They failed.

I’m hoping Mike Elko is different, but I think we finally got it right.

I can’t believe anyone with authority thought Mark Stoops was the answer. What a train wreck that would have been. No Stoops for us, thank goodness.

What a Fiasco

Someone in the Texas A&M Athletic Department took all the attention away from a pretty good day of college football, including one of the greatest endings in Iron Bowl history.

For 3 hours on a Saturday night, Mark Stoops had become the head coach of Texas A&M.

I don’t know exactly what happened, but it seems Ross Bjork had been discussing the position with Mark Stoops. He was doing this without the knowledge of his bosses and didn’t have full authority. Stoops and Bjork had reached an agreement. All that was needed was approval from Bjork’s higher-ups.

From what I can tell, Billy Liucci with TexAgs posted on his website that the hire of Stoops was all but done. Liucci is also the person who broke the news that Jimbo had been fired. He’s clearly connected to someone who said it was okay to post the information.

The hiring of Mark Stoops by Texas A&M hit social media, and all hell broke loose. I’ve never seen anything like it. My phone blew up from people asking what was going on. Twitter/X was full of people in disapproval. NOBODY was supportive of the hire.

For good reason. You don’t fire Jimbo Fisher to hire Mark Stoops. It makes ZERO sense that someone at Texas A&M was even talking to Stoops, much less finalizing details for his hiring.

Mark Stoops was never getting hired at Texas A&M. I don’t think he would have gotten the approval from those above Bjork. A lot of assumptions were made. It was a done deal, but it never was.

Either way, it’s an embarrassment. It’s further proof the chain of command at Texas A&M is broken and needs to be fixed. I don’t know precisely what needs to be fixed, but someone above Bjork better be super pissed off if this ever happened and get it fixed.

Watching Bjork’s initial press conference and interviews over the last couple of weeks made me think we had an actual plan for hiring Jimbo’s replacement. It’s now apparent we don’t. That’s frustrating.

The Mark Stoops era at Texas A&M provided and will provide a ton of good humor. Unfortunately, it’s an embarrassment of leadership. It should have never happened.

Where Do The Aggies Go From Here:

Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened in college football. Most people don’t know, but Alabama once “hired” Rich Rodriguez, who decided not to come. The guy they wound up hiring would be Nick Saban. It’s wild to think what would have happened if Rich Rodriguez had taken the job and not Saban.

There’s another instance where Tennessee “hired” Greg Schiano, but similar to A&M and Stoops, the fan base revolted, and Schiano didn’t take the job. The Volunteers would eventually hire Jeremy Pruitt, and we know how that turned out. It wasn’t good.

Is Texas A&M hiring the next Nick Saban? Probably not. But they can avoid hiring the next Jeremy Pruitt.

Someone needs to get their ass chewed on this morning. Then, immediately settle down and get re-focused on hiring the best coach for Texas A&M. If that means taking the keys from Ross Bjork, then so be it. It would be best if he were talking to Mark Stoops.

I believe Texas A&M had a plan to see how the games this weekend played out. Most notably, with Ryan Day at Ohio State and Kalen DeBoer at Washington.

Day lost, and DeBoer won.

The Aggie leadership needs to get back to their original plan. Reach out to Day and ask his interest and if he can make a decision in the next 72 hours. I still believe he’s the best hire for the job. Conform with DeBoer he’s deciding once Washington is out of the hunt for the College Football Playoff.

You reach out to Jed Fisch and confirm he’s still interested despite what happened on Saturday night. You tell him nothing was officially decided, and an erroneous report occurred.

You also put Elijah Robinson and Mike Elko back in serious consideration. I have some concerns with Elijah Robinson based on how the team played in his two games as head coach. Maybe there was just too much “Jimbo Stink,” but many apparent errors that somebody should have cleaned up weren’t. They still looked a lot like a Jimbo-coached team.

Robinson may need an entire off-season to change the program’s culture. I know the players want to play for Robinson, but there’s a massive difference between wanting to play for someone and winning football games. We don’t have enough information on what kind of coach Elijah Robinson could be. I wanted to see more out of him these last two games.

As for Elko, I still think he’s the ultimate fallback guy, but you can’t wait forever. He would stabilize a lot of the issues Jimbo left. This feels like a “lick your wounds” hire at this point, but there are much worse hires.

The other thing I would do at this point, but it won’t happen, is to reach out to Lane Kiffin and Eli Drinkwitz. If you’re going to talk to SEC coaches, this is who it should be. Certainly not Mark Stoops.

I know many people don’t like Kiffin, and I have issues with him, but he would elevate A&M’s football program from a Win/Loss standpoint.

The number one focus for the coaching search should be SOLELY on finding a coach that will improve the number of wins. That’s it.

Sure, there has to be some element to being a fit, but don’t let emotion miss out on someone that can elevate the program to national prominence. That’s what Bjork said was the mission in firing Jimbo and getting a replacement.

While what happened with Stoops on Saturday is an embarrassment, the A&M administration still has the opportunity to do what they set out to do – Improve the number of wins from Jimbo Fisher.

Someone in the administration needs to chew on whoever’s ass needs chewing on and then get everyone calmed down and back on the mission.

This whole thing can still be salvaged with the proper focus. Hopefully, that happens, and we can all look back on the last Saturday night of the regular season and laugh.

Right, Aggie leadership?

Is This Hire Gonna Be Like It Used To Be

As we wait on the white smoke from Kyle Field, I want to take a look back at previous Aggie Football coaching hires to see if this go-round is any different.

This is a monumental hire for Aggie Football. I know it feels like that every time but this time is truly different. The reason is the talent on the current team is capable of winning a national championship. It is.
The same thing existed in 2011 when we hired Kevin Sumlin but nobody realized it. We didn’t know what Johnny Manziel was capable of. This time is different because every coaching staff in the country knows what kind of talent is on the Aggie roster.

In addition, coaches know that Texas A&M is poised to compete at the highest levels in what college football is about to become. Money and support will matter now more than ever. You’re starting to hear from coaches that if a program doesn’t have money to spend it’s going to be limited in its success going forward.

Coaches understand what Texas A&M is capable of going forward even if most college football fans that can only look at past results don’t.

To get there I want to go back and look at who and how we hired coaches before this one. Having that frame of reference will help determine if we truly learn from past mistakes and do things differently.
Before I get going let me say I have very little inside knowledge. Most of my knowledge comes from public sources anyone can read. I think I consume a lot more stuff when it comes to Aggie Football but I don’t have any real inside knowledge other than a few things I’ve picked up along the way.

Previous Coaches:

Jackie Sherrill:
I’m going back as far as my knowledge will let me. I was alive when Jackie was hired but I wasn’t aware of the hire. In reading the history of this hire this was a MASSIVE hire. Bum Bright wanted a big name and wanted to flex the money muscle.

Bum was willing to make the next Aggie coach the first with an annual income of over a million dollars.
He tried to get Bo Schembechler first but he declined. Then he went and got Jackie Sherrill.

Jackie had just come off three consecutive 11-1 seasons at Pitt with three bowl wins where his teams finished in the Top 5. He was extremely successful at Pitt.

Jackie had great success at A&M but his hire was as big as it got at the time.

The search consisted solely of finding the most successful coach that would take the money.

It worked.

R.C. Slocum:
Slocum took over from Jackie due to some recruiting violations and internal politics.

Slocum was the obvious choice because the Aggies were rolling on the field and Slocum was the architect of the Wrecking Crew. No coaching search necessary.

Just give the keys to the machine Jackie built and see what he can do. The same formula has worked for OU giving the keys to Lincoln Riley and Ohio State giving the keys to Ryan Day.

Dennis Franchione:
Sandwiched between Jackie and the Jimbo hire, Dennis Franchione was as big of a hire as it got at the time.

He had been wildly successful at TCU and had some immediate success at Alabama. He looked like a no-brainer hire.

The story was the Franchiones wanted to come back to Texas. From a football standpoint Alabama was about to have some recruiting restrictions placed on them for things that happened before Franchione got there.

That all makes sense as to why Franchione would take the Aggie job over the Crimson Tide job. It was also deemed payback for Alabama luring Bear Bryant away from Texas A&M. The storylines were wonderful to paint for the media and Texas A&M.

There was a fallacy in this hire in that Fran was the only coach considered based on my knowledge of how things went down. It makes sense as on the surface Fran was a MASSIVE get for Texas A&M and the school hadn’t had a coaching search in 20ish years.

They didn’t want to screw up firing Slocum and missing out on Fran. Based on what I’ve read and heard including being very attentive at the time no one else was considered.

I wanted them to consider Brent Venables who was running OU’s defense to perfection at the time along with this coach at Bowling Green named Urban Meyer. Yes, Urban Meyer jumped from Bowling Green to Utah at the same time Fran went from Alabama to A&M.

To be completely honest I think even if the school did a legit coaching search with due diligence on multiple coaches Fran likely still gets hired. However, who knows what a true search with due diligence would have produced?

Fran didn’t work out because he was a fraud propped up by Gary Patterson at TCU and some pretty awesome talent left to him at Alabama. I don’t know if due diligence would have uncovered that but it would have been interesting to know.

Mike Sherman:
We got Bill Byrne as our AD right before we hired Fran but Byrne didn’t have much to do with the Fran hire other than stamp it and introduce him at the press conference. For Mike Sherman, I was told this hire was all Bill Byrne’s by someone who would know.

I trust that person immensely but the factors around the timing of the hire lend to that as well. Robert Gates had just left Texas A&M the year before and we had an interim President. Bill Byrne had sole control of the Athletic Department.

This hire also fits Bill Byrne to a T.

I could write 10 pages on Bill Byrne but the jist of Bill Byrne is that he seemed to never think Texas A&M was a Tier 1 athletic department. He would talk like it but his actions never showed it. He was mindful of finances which was very helpful from a profitability standpoint.

When it came to hiring coaches he never shot for the stars when it came to head coaching hires other than Billy Gillispie, Pat Henry, and Gary Blair.

While all three were EXCELLENT hires they were also easy hires. They were Texas guys that weren’t making huge salaries at the time. He just paid them more money and gave them the keys to their respective sports at a flagship Texas school Very astute hires but it didn’t take a lot of work on his part to make.

For every other hire at Texas A&M, Bill Byrne liked to show he knew more about hiring a coach than anyone else. He never went for the big names. He liked to find the diamond in the rough.

When Coach Fran announced he had been fired Bill Byrne said he was immediately starting a national search. Well, that national search took him to a hotel room in Hempstead to interview Mike Sherman. I shit you not that’s about as far as it really got.

Bill Byrne loved the Green Bay Packers and the offensive line. Mike Sherman fit exactly what Bill Byrne thought football should be.

While Mike Sherman is a fine person and offensive coach he was never made for college football. Especially at a program like Texas A&M. He certainly stabilized the program from what Fran had done to it but Sherman was never the long-term answer. I loathed this hire from a college football standpoint.

It’s been a while so I can’t remember who was available during that coaching cycle but there was another coach that could have been interviewed in Hempstead by the name of Art Briles. He was coaching in Houston just like Mike Sherman. I know Art Briles’ name is sullied now but at the time I don’t see how any person could have interviewed Briles and Sherman thinking that Sherman was the better college hire.
Byrne zeroed in on Mike Sherman from the start and never deviated.

The craziest part about that is EVERYONE knew Fran was getting fired that season. That was the year the news of his VIP email “leaked.” The leaders at Texas A&M had months to see who would be interested.

After Fran was officially dismissed, Bill Byrne simply drove 45 minutes down Highway 6 to meet with the guy I believe he wanted all along. His statement of a “national search” was a farce.

He was always hiring Mike Sherman in my mind. Nobody held Byrne accountable because there was no real leadership at Texas A&M when the hiring went down. Byrne did what he wanted.

Kevin Sumlin:
I don’t have a lot of insider information on the Sumlin hire.

The timing of it all was very strange. I do know there were no plans to fire Mike Sherman until after the loss to Texas on Thanksgiving night. The decision as I understand it was made pretty swiftly that night.

We were headed to the SEC. There were concerns about Mike Sherman being the guy to lead the Aggies into the SEC but he was going to get the chance. However, that loss to Texas made it obvious he wasn’t the guy.

To complicate matters, Bill Byrne was on his way out. Bill Byrne didn’t think the Aggies should go to the SEC so he was winding down as athletic director.

So we had a surprise firing and lame-duck athletic director. We were behind the ball from a timing standpoint and an athletic director who didn’t care about the results for that head coach.

I think Byrne headed up the search committee since he was technically the athletic director but there was a lot of input from various parties. As with most committees with a lot of input and little accountability, the results don’t turn out well.

I will say at the time Kevin Sumlin was a very hot name. He had great success at Houston and seemed to be on the rise. I don’t begrudge the hire at all but just curious what some due diligence would have done.

Sumlin was successful thanks to Case Keenum and Bob Stoops. You remove those two elements and he’s not the same coach. I don’t know that due diligence would have uncovered that but my guess is Sumlin was the hire all along because it was the easy hire.

To be fair, the obvious coaching candidates at the time were all pretty lame. Larry Fedora was the other name being thrown around and he didn’t do anything at UNC. It might have made sense for A&M to hire an up-and-coming coordinator or big name over an established coach at the lower levels.

There was a rumor Mark Richt was being considered and may have even visited campus but that seemed like a stretch to get him from Georgia. I’m also not sure Richt would have been the correct hire as his ceiling was pretty clear.

Either way, Texas A&M went with the easy and obvious hire in Sumlin.

Jimbo Fisher:
Kevin Sumlin went into the 2017 season on a massive hot seat. After he blew the game against UCLA in the Rose Bowl his seat was on fire and he was a dead man walking.

The whole season there was speculation on not if Sumlin got canned but when. The Aggies had plenty of time to get things lined out for a new coach.

Thanks to Scott Woodward who was the Athletic Director at the time they made a massive hire in Jimbo Fisher. I don’t know if anyone else was considered as it seems Woodward zeroed in on Jimbo Fisher and no one else. I think 99 times out of 100 you make this hire but there were some questions about Jimbo.

For me, I was mostly curious about how the Jameis Winston situation was handled. Art Briles had been let go from Baylor a couple of seasons ago so I was curious what Jimbo knew and how he handled it.

On the football field, Jimbo was having his worst season ever. Florida State was struggling to be bowl-eligible and had been passed up in the ACC by Clemson the previous two seasons. Florida State was in a clear decline from when Jameis was under center.

Everyone chalked it up to Jimbo being frustrated with the FSU administration. He was checked out because he knew he was headed to Aggieland. On the surface, it sounds reasonable but you would think a championship-caliber coach would have some personal pride to try and win football games. Especially when you’re still a big dog in the conference.

I think even with some due diligence you still hire Jimbo but I don’t think the administration did that.

Through Scott Woodward’s connection to Jimbo, the Aggies could make a massive flex by hiring a coach with a national championship to his name.

Like I said, 99 times out of 100 you make that hire but it would have been interesting to look under Jimbo’s hood and see who else might be interested and attainable.

Summary:
Other than Mike Sherman I believe every coach the Aggies hired would have been hired even with some more due diligence. They were easy and obvious hires but rooted in enough reason they would be successful as the head coach in Aggieland.

I just think it might have made more sense to not zero in on someone from the start. Have some flexibility in truly considering more than a single candidate should question marks emerge about the lead candidate. You never know what might happen when you don’t have a solution to the problem before working through the problem.

What We Know About This Coaching Hire:

In his initial “We Canned Jimbo” press conference, Ross Bjork laid out these items for what he deemed necessary for the next head coach in Aggieland.

1) Program Identity – Not sure what this means other than they need head coaching experience along with if they’re defensive or offensive oriented.
2) Great Interpersonal Skills – They don’t want to hire an asshole. I wonder if they’ll take a jerk that wins football games.
3) Track Record of Player Development – Assuming this means putting some guys in the NFL.
4) Commitment to Academics – Giggle.
5) Recruiting Machine – Obviously.
6) Supreme Organizational Skills – I think this is a shot at Jimbo.
7) Culture of Discipline – Another shot at Jimbo I believe.
8) Passion for the Game – I take it as they want someone not just looking for a paycheck. Wonderful idea.
9) Proven Winner With Strong Leadership Skills – This one seems obvious.
10) Involved in the Community – Eh. Let’s be real. Nobody cares about this one. Just win football games and the community can fend for itself.
11) Knowledge of Xs and Os – While important I’d rather they just have the ability to hire great coordinators, watch game film to understand opponents, and watch the game to offer adjustments to their staff. “Schematic Advantage” as Charlie Weiss once put it is way overrated for a head coach.
12) Ability to Capitalize on Today’s Modern College Athletics – I think this means someone with intimate knowledge of NIL programs and the Transfer Portal. We ABSOLUTELY need someone knowledgeable about that.

None of these items are truly insightful. All they tell me is the Aggies are looking for an established head coach with some kind of record if they can find one. It makes sense. Start with someone who has the most experience and work from there.

The Contract:
Ross Bjork has alluded to learning from the Jimbo contracts. First off, we don’t need to tie ourselves to a coach for 10 years. I don’t know the number Bjork has in mind but I wouldn’t go longer than 6 years. From an annual salary standpoint, I wouldn’t go more than $10 million a year.

I don’t want to give out a $60 million contract but it’s not far off from what the top coaches make. You are going to have to pay market value to get a top-notch head coach. If you can grab someone with a truly established track record don’t let money be the factor. Just don’t tie ourselves to a decade if it doesn’t work out.

In addition to the annual salary throw some serious incentives for 10 wins, SEC West, SEC Champion, College Football Playoffs, and of course a massive incentive for a national title. I’m saying you can make another $10 million if you win it all.

Pay them a ton when they’ve done something.

The Search Process and Candidates:
The rest of what you’re going to read is based on my reading of social media and various articles. I have no insider information on what’s going on. I do think I have a pretty good idea of what’s real and what’s not. I know who to trust in these processes and who not to.

I believe Dan Lanning was the number one target from the second we fired Jimbo. As both sides started talking I think it became clear Lanning isn’t going to leave Oregon for Texas A&M right now. Some of it is money and the other is he has serious momentum at Oregon. He’s got a potential Heisman Trophy candidate and a decent shot at playing for the College Football Playoff.

Should he lose to Oregon State this weekend or Washington next weekend he might come back around but I think that’s a long shot.

Because Lanning isn’t a serious candidate it seems the search committee broadened their search. Thanks to the standardization of Zoom and Teams it seems they have talked to several candidates last week. Based on what I’ve read they talked to actual candidates and not their agent which has been the norm in several coaching candidates.

Many times, agents got the coaches hired without administrations ever actually talking to the coach. It sounds like the Aggies are talking to actual coaches via video conferencing. I think this is a great move.
The Aggies also seem to be talking to coaches who have expressed interest in the Aggie job. It doesn’t hurt to talk to someone to see if they’re genuinely interested and have a plan. You never know who might impress you until you talk to them.

I don’t know what the result will be but so far I’m pleased with the process based on what I’ve read.
Based on what I’ve read and seen there appear to be three finalists in the moment. This is all very fluid as there are two more weeks of games. I’m not sure how a coach with a legit shot at the College Football Playoff leaves their program for Texas A&M. Stranger things have happened but it seems like a massive longshot for a coach to leave with a shot to win a national title.

Here are who I believe are the three finalists heading into the final weekend of college football:

Ryan Day:
This seems like a massive longshot but the more I’ve read on Day it seems like if he loses to Michigan on Saturday he’ll be named the Aggie head coach next week. Ohio State thinks he’s underachieving and will never win them a national championship.

To me, that’s crazy because he pushed Georgia to the brink in the Semi-Final last season. If his kicker makes that game-ending field goal they win the game and I’m convinced they would have beat TCU in the championship game.

This dude is a field goal away from a national championship and they’re still not happy. Sure, Ohio State has massive resources but Day is doing a pretty good job. They’ve only won two national championships since 1970. Twice in 50 years. Day isn’t doing anything more than any coach before him.

He’s recruiting well and has been in the College Football Playoff for 3 of 4 seasons. What more does Ohio State want? I have no clue how he could be on the hot seat but if I was him I wouldn’t be happy either.

In addition to his actual coaching, he’s become enamored with the SEC. Ever since losing to Alabama in the 2020 title game, he realized how he needed to adapt Ohio State to being more physical like the SEC. In his first test with an SEC team since that 2020 game with Bama, he took Georgia to the wire.

I don’t think he loses to Michigan this weekend so the Aggies never get a real chance to hire him. However, if he wants to come to Aggieland you make this hire all day every day.

The dude wants to win it all and he’s got the experience and is still plenty young and hungry.
Cheer for Michigan as this is the guy to hire.

Kalen DeBoer:
I don’t know much about this guy as he didn’t come onto the national scene until this year. He did well at Washington last year and has been damn good this year. If he can get by Oregon next week he’s headed to the College Football Playoff.

My biggest question with DeBoer is his lack of time at a major program without a stud at quarterback. Michael Penix, Jr is a stud so I’d like to see more of DeBoer without him.

I wouldn’t mind this hire but there are lots of questions in my mind for how he’ll translate to the SEC as well.

Jed Fisch:
Ironically enough, Jed Fisch took over the Arizona program from Kevin Sumlin. He went 1-11 in his first season, 5-7 last season, and he’s likely to go 9-3 in his third year at Arizona.

What he’s done in 3 seasons at Arizona is pretty impressive. I just don’t know what his ceiling is.
His pedigree is pretty impressive as he’s coached for a ton of successful head coaches.

He’s a roll of the dice hire. If he’s the floor it’s not a terrible floor.

It also gives me some hope the search committee didn’t go in with any preconceived notions about who should be the head coach. They’ve let the process play out like it should if Fisch is a finalist.

So What’s Going To Happen?:

At this moment nobody knows for sure.

Bjork has made it clear he’d like to hire someone by December 4th due to the transfer portal window opening up. That makes sense. The College Football Playoff will be set so no need to wait around on a coach in the playoffs. Make the hire once the playoffs have been set if not sooner with Day.

If Ohio State loses this weekend then I think Day is named next week. I don’t think that happens and Day stays at Ohio State. He’s the guy I want even above Lanning after thinking about it more.

Assuming Ohio State wins, I think we wait to see if Washington beats Oregon next weekend. If Washington loses then I think DeBoer is headed to Aggieland. I wouldn’t be upset at that either.

I do think both Ohio State and Washington make the College Football Playoff removing Day and DeBoer from consideration.

We’ll make one more run at Lanning before announcing Jed Fisch as the head coach on Monday, December 4th.

Maybe Fisch can finally be the guy to Make Aggie Football Great Again.

You Didn’t Win, Jimbo

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.

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:

A compilation of the 118 times Jimbo Fisher has said the word “execute”

(1/2) pic.twitter.com/VTdGtGaENM
— Aggie Highlights (@aggie_highlight) October 24, 2023

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.

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.

Thoughts from the Auburn Game

Before I get to anything else on the Auburn game let’s be clear that’s not a good Auburn team. They’re a step up from New Mexico and Louisiana Monroe but they’re a step down from Miami and might be the worst SEC team we play this season.

They went through three quarterbacks without one getting hurt so that tells you the state of their offense. They were trying to find some kind of spark because they didn’t have a quarterback who could move the ball.

Regardless of Auburn’s lack of talent, this was still a good win for the Aggies. Still lots of questions but the Aggies handled the Tigers from start to finish with no real scares. Even when Auburn returned the fumble for a touchdown it wasn’t a real scare. The Aggies were still up by 10 and Auburn’s offense hadn’t done anything all day.

My biggest concern for the day was having to take a timeout on the second play. THE SECOND PLAY OF THE GAME WE’RE TAKING A DAMN TIMEOUT.

How does that even happen? That’s the mark of an ill-prepared team. We’ve seen this way too many times in Jimbo’s Aggie tenure where this team comes out flat, confused, or just not ready to play. It’s a massive concern that keeps happening. This was a game we should have been prepared for. We shouldn’t have been overwhelmed by this Auburn team at Kyle Field.

To make matters worse we get a false start coming out of the timeout. I don’t get it. What gets discussed during the timeout?

It should be crystal clear what personnel group will be going out there, what play will be run, and what the snap count/cadence will be.

Taking a timeout followed by a false start on the second play of the game is an ill-prepared team and that starts with coaching. There’s no defending or excusing that. That’s on Jimbo and it’s a HUGE concern in my book.

Some things need changing and Jimbo isn’t changing them.

The other concern with Jimbo is a bit nitpicky but his being on the field during the fumble return. He claims he thought the play was dead. How the hell did he think that? It was a clear fumble in the field of play and there were no whistles blown. Nobody on the field thought the play was dead.

Why did he think that? What does he see when he coaches a game? How can he screw that up? Did he just stop following the ball?

I don’t get how he thought the play was dead when nobody on the field thought that. How can he be the only one in that instance?

It kind of makes me wonder if he truly sees the game as it’s being played or if he’s still watching theoretical football in his mind disconnected from what’s happening on the field.

I don’t think he should get fined and it’s sort of funny but it makes me wonder what he sees in the game if he thought that play was dead. Nobody else near the field thought the play was dead but him.

Let’s talk about the rest of the football game.

Offense:

This offense didn’t look great for most of the game. Conner Weigman got hurt before the end of the half but he was struggling. He was 8 for 14 and 70 yards before leaving. That’s not terrible but he never looked super comfortable as some of his misses weren’t close.

We were moving the ball with Weigman but stalled out thanks to our inability to establish the run, penalties, and inability to connect on third-down passes. 3 of Conner’s incompletions came on 3rd downs resulting in a field goal attempt and two punts.

Our inability to establish the run in the first half was by far the most concerning thing in the game beyond the apparent lack of preparedness. Outside of Le’Veon Moss’ 34-yard run we only had 29 yards rushing in the first half on 10 other rushes. 2.9 yards isn’t a terrible yard per carry but the problem was 5 of those rushes were for 1 yard or less.

On 11 rushing attempts in the first half not quite half resulted in a zero or one-yard gain. That’s feast or famine and something that has to be improved if we’re going to do well in the SEC.

It’s nice that we can break off good runs here and there but I’d rather establish the line of scrimmage where 50% of your rushing attempts aren’t stalemated by the defense.

Our running backs rushed for 202 yards on 27 carries. That’s certainly not a bad day on the ground with 7.5 yards per carry. However, 2 of those carries were for 114 yards so the remainder of the 25 carries netted 88 yards. That’s 3.5 yards a carry which isn’t terrible but much of came in the second half where we had a margin of error to try and wear down the defense.

I’m being nitpicky here but the inability to establish the run game early is a big concern to me. Maybe I’m too old school but I still believe the ability to establish the line of scrimmage early in the game is a big factor in how much success you’ll have. Especially against equal opponents.

You can’t fully rely on the run game but the ability to establish it puts pressure on a defense. This Aggie offensive line has to get better at establishing the run game much sooner than the second half.

As for the rest of the offense, it was honestly mediocre as well except for 2 big pass plays by Max Johnson. His touchdown to his brother Jake was a great play made possible by his rolling out and keeping the play alive. His touchdown pass to Evan Stewart was one of the most beautiful balls I’ve ever seen at Kyle. Not quite as good as Reggie McNeal to Greg Porter against OU in 2002 but it was up there.

On the day Conner and Max combined for 193 yards completing 15 of 25 passes. That’s not terrible but it’s certainly not dominant. You’d certainly like to have seen more against a team like Auburn at Kyle.

We won comfortably but we did not win convincingly.

Count me in the camp that still has concerns about this offensive line. It’s certainly improved over last year but I don’t think it’s playing near the level that it should be. Still too much confusion via penalties, blown assignments, and just not being dominant.

As for Conner, it looks like we dodged a bullet with him. I saw him hobble to the locker room and it didn’t look good. I suppose it was a decent sign he wasn’t being assisted in any way but it was clear he was hurt and not coming back.

He looked a little like Bisontis did against Louisiana Monroe and Bisontis was out there playing against Auburn the next week. I didn’t think that was possible. I can’t judge injuries from my seat.

Jimbo said the X-rays were negative which is great. I think we’ll likely lose him for a couple of games but we should have him back after the bye week at worst.

I think this is Max’s team against Arkansas but suppose Conner could be back out there.

I have faith in both quarterbacks individually but until I see more from this offensive line I have questions on how much offense we’ll be able to produce against SEC teams that are better than Auburn.

Defense:

For the second week in a row, the Aggie defense gave up zero touchdowns. I don’t care who you’ve played that’s damn impressive to go 8 quarters of football in an offensive era and not give up a touchdown.

In addition, we limited Auburn to 3 first downs on 15 3rd down attempts. That’s also the second week in a row we’ve shut down the opposing offense on 3rd downs.

I’m not sure what to make of this defense because they’ve dominated their opponent in the last two games. It just hasn’t been against an offense that I think is very good and a real test.

To their credit, Jimbo and Durkin decided to apply pressure this game and they did a really impressive job.

According to the stat sheet the Aggies had seven sacks and an additional quarterback hurry.

They should have had two fumble recoveries returned for touchdowns. However, the refs hosed them on a BS replay overturn that was not conclusive if you have half a brain. In addition, Bryce Anderson swatted another lateral pass he should have picked up and ran back for a touchdown. Bryce brain-farted there.

Two scoop and scores would have only added to the domination on Saturday.

The Aggie defense brought pressure in a big way on Saturday. To me, it looked like Durkin decided to do away with gap integrity and just let the defensive line try to dominate the offensive line with the linebackers filling the gaps that were created.

It worked based on the results. The defensive line got a great push into the backfield and the linebackers did an OUTSTANDING job of filling the gaps as soon as they saw them. They weren’t playing on their heels waiting to see what developed and instead went into attack mode when they saw a gap develop.

You can question the ability of the Auburn quarterbacks all you want but the reality is they had no time to pass and the Aggie defensive line and linebackers were disruptive all game long. All of that pressure caused Auburn to hold quite a bit. When SEC refs are regularly calling holding in a game you know you’re dominating the line of scrimmage.

Passing wise Auburn was only 9 for 23 passing for 56 yards. That’s a roughly 40% completion rate for 56 yards. They just weren’t able to pass on us so give credit where credit is due. The defensive players and staff flat-out shut down Auburn’s passing game.

All because of pressure at the line of scrimmage.

I do have a concern with the amount of yards they gave up on the ground. Auburn’s top two running backs rushed for 112 yards on 17 carries. That’s 6.5 yards a carry.

Luckily Auburn was losing the whole game so they couldn’t try and establish the run. Auburn was playing from behind so they had to attempt some passes that weren’t working.

It looks like this defense can only shut down one aspect of an offense each game. As long as you choose correctly it’s fine but it’s a slight concern.

Another slight concern is the Auburn quarterbacks missed some open receivers but to the defense’s credit the Auburn quarterbacks missed them because they had no time to throw.

With all of that being said, I can’t dog on this defense. What they’ve done the last two weeks is impressive. I just hope it can carry over to better opponents.

I’m going to carry trauma from the Miami game until I see this defense do it against a better opponent. Speaking of Miami, if you look at the Aggie’s schedule and the quarterbacks they’ll face this year I don’t think it’s a stretch to say Tyler Van Dyke will be the best passer they face all year.

We’re gonna have some tests with Joe Milton, Spencer Rattler, and Jaxson Dart but we could look back on the Miami game and realize we got picked apart by an outstanding passer. At least I hope we can say that when it’s all said and done.

Just a positive thought for the defense…

Special Teams:

I usually gloss over special teams but there are two things I want to point out in this game.

Nik Constantinou had a horrible game. His first three punts were under 40 yards and he wasn’t trying to pin them inside the 20. They also had no real height. They were just three ugly punts under 40 yards. He had plenty of room to boom a 50-yarder but for whatever reason he kicked three ugly balls.

His fourth punt went 48 yards to the Auburn 22 and then his final punt was 46 yards to the Auburn 10-yard line. His final punt was fine but he could have put more leg into the first four but he didn’t for some reason.

Hopefully, it was just a bad day for him because we should be able to put a punter out there who can boom 50-yard punts.

The other thing I want to point out is a missed opportunity by Jimbo. Coming off the Bryce Anderson lateral bat down we backed Auburn up to their 5-yard line thanks to a penalty by Auburn. It’s 4th and 27 at the Auburn 5-yard line so the punter isn’t as deep as he normally is in his end zone.

PUT TEN MEN ON THE LINE AND SEE IF YOU CAN BLOCK IT!!!!! THAT’S OPPORTUNITY!!!!!

You tell Ainias to fair catch it as we’re trying a jailbreak at the line of scrimmage. Instead, Jimbo just sets up a regular old punt return where Ainias returns it for 10 yards. A smart aggressive coach goes for it in that moment. There’s no reason not to.

Jimbo probably just wanted to get the ball back to his offense to see if they could score. Ironically enough that was the series Auburn picked up the fumble for a touchdown where Jimbo failed to make the tackle. Bad decisions all around by Jimbo for a quick span of the game.

I swear Jimbo sees Special Teams as an annoying event that has to take place to get offenses the ball. Since he’d rather do away with it he doesn’t see a real point in practicing or scheming each week.

Great coaches use special teams as an opportunity. Jimbo sees special teams as a gnat he just swats at.

Looking Forward:

I still believe every game left on this schedule is winnable. The talent on this Aggie team is there even with Conner being out however long he’s going to be out. Max Johnson is a more than capable backup quarterback and can win every game he starts.

Realistically though I think we go 5-3 simply because Jimbo hasn’t changed that much. He’s the same old head coach he’s been for 6 seasons in Aggieland. If his boys can out-athlete the other team he’s going to win.

He’s certainly not going to do it with scheme and coaching decisions. He’s going to get outcoached in at least 3 games on the schedule. I hope he proves me wrong but there are just a few things in the Auburn game to give me doubt that Jimbo is a different coach in 2023 compared to the previous 5 seasons.

He’s still the same stubborn coach who doesn’t know how to adjust in games and doesn’t have his team prepared from the start.

As for Arkansas, I think we win this weekend. I think we can bottle up K.J. Jefferson just enough to keep them from running up and down the field on us. I think offensively we’ll look a lot like we did against Auburn where we struggle to finish drives but we’ll score a couple of touchdowns and kick enough field goals.

I feel like both teams will score less than 50 points and probably less than 40 points. It’s going to be equal parts inept offenses and decent defenses with the Aggies having the better athletes to win.

Give me the Aggies winning 20-16.

Just win, Jimbo.

Thoughts from the ULM Game

What a difference a week makes. This time last week you thought Aggie Football was doomed forever. A week later you’re eyeing that maroon Kool-Aid wanting to take a sip or already taken some.

I’ve got news for you – nothing has changed. Other than the opponent which makes all the difference. This is still the same Jimbo Fisher lead team we’ve seen for the last two years.

Over the summer, in my Season Prediction, I mentioned it would be best to wait until after the Tennessee game to get a real feel for what kind of team we have. I still believe that even though it’s so easy to get caught up in the week-to-week emotions.

We’re about to hit a four-game stretch that’s going to give us all indications of what kind of team this 2023 Aggie team is. Auburn, Arkansas, Alabama, and Tennessee are finally going to give this team a true test. Interestingly enough, I think they’re in order of difficulty based on what I’ve seen of each team through 3 games and where they’re being played.

Miami exposed this team’s weaknesses so we’ll see if the Aggies can fix them in time for SEC play.

I do believe the Aggies may win all 4 of these games. However, I think the most likely outcome is we split them based on what I saw on Saturday at Kyle Field.

Offense:

Far and away the most positive takeaway from Saturday’s game was the passing accuracy of Conner Weigman. Holy cow. That kid was slinging the ball.

He was making REALLY quick reads and letting the ball fly with amazing accuracy. He wasn’t just sitting in the pocket waiting for guys to get open. He was quickly deciding what guys would be open and making great passes.

I know it was the Louisiana Monroe secondary which isn’t the same as an SEC secondary but it was great to see him not only processing the offense so quickly but throwing absolute strikes to his receivers.

He was 25 of 29 passing for 337 yards. That’s 86% accuracy. I don’t care who you’re playing. That’s as good as it gets.

If I have one concern about Weigman it’s I think he waits too long to throw the deep ball or he doesn’t have the arm to get it out there. Often he’s throwing it where his receiver has to slow down to catch the ball on deep routes.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather the quarterback throw it where the receiver can adjust to get it rather than throw it too far where the receiver never has a chance. It’s a minor complaint based on everything else but it’s the one thing I’ve noticed.

As for the rest of the offense, there were some bright spots and some concerns.

Evan Stewart did not suit up for some reason and Noah Thomas came out early. Even without those guys, the receivers did fine. Ainias reminded us what he’s capable of and Jahdae Walker stepped up in a big way with Stewart and Thomas out. I like Walker a lot. I think he would have been a big starter on any Aggie team in Jimbo’s first five years. Kind of crazy that he’s second string this season since we finally have talent at receiver. Moose didn’t get a ton of looks but he was productive with the looks he got.

I thought Jake Johnson and even Max Wright looked good catching the ball. Conner spread the ball out between his receiving weapons which was great to see.

At running back I thought Rueben Owens made some strides running with more confidence. He’s the most talented back from an all-around standpoint. He’s shown some hesitation in the first couple of games but as this game went on he seemed to be more comfortable. He’s a guy we need to settle in and lead this backfield even if he’s a true freshman.

My biggest concern on offense remains the offensive line. They weren’t tested and seemed to do fine but it took them a while to establish the run on what should be an inferior defense.

For whatever reason this line is playing musical chairs. Bryce Foster didn’t play so Mark Nabou played center. He had been splitting time at left guard and it looked like he was going to take the left guard spot. I don’t know why Foster was out but it’s not good for an offensive line to keep moving parts around.

In addition to Foster being out Chase Bisontis went out about halfway through the second quarter. He’s our starting right tackle. I saw him go out and it didn’t look good. It was clear he couldn’t go another play. He pulled himself out by going to the ground requiring the trainers to come out. He was able to walk off under his weight but he was moving slowly. They took him to the locker room before the end of the half and I believe he came out in street clothes for the second half.

Jimbo has said he’s fine. I’m not buying that. You don’t pull yourself out of a game by going to the ground and then coming out in street clothes for the second half. I get the opponent but nothing about that says he’s totally fine. He came out in the Miami game so he’s got something lingering considering he’s not finished two straight games now.

I don’t know what’s going on with Duece Fatheree but he didn’t take a snap in this game. He played a little in the Miami game but he’s been our starting right tackle for a season and a half. I know he’s been dealing with an injury himself but it’s a little concerning that when Bisontis goes out Fatheree isn’t taking any snaps.

We’re headed into SEC play and I think there are legitimate questions as to who our starting center and right tackle are. Injuries or not you don’t want to be wondering who’s going to be starting for 2/5ths of your offensive line.

I believe that’s where we are.

Beyond the personnel, there are questions about how well this unit can handle pressure on the edge from a legitimate defense. If I’m a defensive coach and I’ve watched film of A&M’s last games against Power 5 opponents I’m applying pressure from both edges to see what the Aggies can do.

Until I routinely see this unit stop pressure from an opposing defense I’m going to have concerns. Secondaries will cover our receivers tighter. Even if Conner is making quick decisions it’s going to be tougher to complete passes with increased pressure and tighter coverage.

I didn’t see enough on Saturday to make me feel confident much has changed from what’s been this offense’s weakness since last year and against Miami.

Defense:

Not sure what to make of the defensive effort on Saturday. Statistically, it was damn good. Louisiana Monroe had 222 total offensive yards and no touchdowns.

The Aggie defense allowed ZERO passing yards in the second half. That’s crazy. It’s impossible to do better than that for a half of football from a pass-defense standpoint.

Louisiana Monroe is a running team and only attempted 17 passes the entire game completing 6. They weren’t trying to pass being down by a large margin. They stayed committed to the run. We won’t see that from another team this season.

From my vantage, the secondary wasn’t tested at all. It’s hard to point to the stats and say our pass defense dominated them. They had a couple of completions in the first half where I saw the same secondary from the week before in Miami.

From a pressure standpoint, we tried a few twists on the line but that was about it. I get because of Lousiana Monroe being a running team it’s hard to attempt some unique blitzes and pressure packages we haven’t tried before.

I just don’t think we can take anything away from this defensive effort and say we corrected the issues we saw in Miami. In a couple of instances, they’re still there.

In a strange twist, I do think this defense will be better at defending the run while struggling against the pass. It’s the exact opposite of last year.

We really need to wait to see what we do against Auburn and Arkansas to see if we corrected the Miami issues. Don’t be shocked at all if both Auburn and Arkansas move the ball through the air as I don’t think the issues have been corrected. It’s hard to correct issues when you’re not tested.

Looking Forward:

I’m assuming no one from an opposing coaching staff is reading this blog so I can say this – Until proven otherwise the way to beat this Aggie team is to pressure the edges with your defense limiting Weigman’s time to throw.

Offensively, Aggie opponents would do well with a lot of intermediate passing routes along with the occasional deep ball. Obviously, you need to mix in some running with draws and play actions to keep the defense honest. I’d also stress the edges with quick sweeps and even misdirection a time or two.

I think this Aggie defense wants to get by on raw talent alone. If you make them defend the whole field as quickly as possible you can move the ball on them.

I hope I’m wrong as I’d love nothing more than to start 4-0 in the SEC.

I just don’t see that happening from what I saw on Saturday.

Just Win, Jimbo.

Jimbo On The Road Es No Bueno

I’m assuming Jimbo is a fan of Willie Nelson. I don’t know how you can exist in Texas and not be a Willie Nelson fan.

Assuming he is, I will wager there’s one song of Willie’s that’s not on Jimbo’s playlist – “On the Road Again.” Based on the results of his tenure in Aggieland, Jimbo hates being on the road again.

The life Jimbo loves is NOT playing road games with his friends.

In fact, Jimbo is on a 7 game road losing streak that dates back to 2021. Ironically enough, this streak was started by a D.J. Durkin lead Ole Miss defense that got the better of Jimbo’s Aggie offense in Oxford, Mississippi.

For Jimbo’s last road victory, you have to go back to October 16, 2021, when the Aggies beat the Missouri Tigers in Columbia.

Here are Jimbo’s remaining road games in 2023 to hopefully end this awful streak:

@ Tennessee
@ Ole Miss
@ LSU

Um, those aren’t the teams I want to be facing on the road if I’m Jimbo Fisher. Those are going to be tough games. The Tennessee game is on October 14th so the best-case scenario has Jimbo going TWO FULL YEARS between road victories. That’s a massive longshot right now though.

Beyond the current losing streak, there’s a greater concern with Jimbo playing on the road in his time as the Aggie head coach. To put it quite frankly – He sucks coaching road games in the maroon and white.

His overall Road Record is 8-14. That’s a 36% winning percentage. He’s basically won every third game on the road. Even if he somehow wins the remaining road games in 2023 he’d be 30% in his last 10 road games. That’s terrible.

Winning those three games would be a REMARKABLE achievement but he’s still in a massive hole from a road-winning standpoint in Aggieland. He just hasn’t won on the road since he got to College Station.

Want more concerning data about Jimbo as a road head coach? His Non-2020 Road Record is 4-13. FOUR AND THIRTEEN IN ROAD GAMES NOT IN 2020!!!! That’s a 24% winning percentage so he’s just winning one out of every four games on the road except for 2020. That season DEFINITELY looks like a massive anomaly right now.

Want EVEN MORE concerning data about Jimbo as a road head coach? Take a look at his 8 road wins and the regular season record for each school.

Road Wins:

2018 South Carolina (7-5)
2019 Ole Miss (4-8)
2020 Miss St (3-7)
2020 South Carolina (2-8)
2020 Auburn (6-4)
2020 Tennessee (3-7)
2021 Colorado (4-8)
2021 Missouri (6-6)

Look at the list again.

Notice anything interesting? That’s right, only TWO of those EIGHT teams have a winning record and even then they’re both just one game above .500. Not an 8-4 team or better in Jimbo’s eight road wins as the Aggie head coach. 22 tries.

Jimbo hasn’t beaten a single team that a normal person would define as a good team in the year he beat them. He’s simply beaten crappy teams on the road. That should be expected for ANY coach much less a man with a 10-year, $95 million contract.

There is certainly no road upset in his 5+ years as Aggie Head Coach. He could have had one last year in Tuscaloosa had he given the ball to Devon Achane but you’ve heard that from me enough. Jimbo outsmarted himself that day.

He has yet to beat an 8-4 team or better on the road in his Aggieland tenure. Read that again and let it soak in. That’s a pitiful showing in 22 attempts. 22 attempts and he hasn’t beaten an 8-4 team in their house.

I know the SEC is tough but that’s pretty damn bad. That’s simply a man who has no clue how to handle road games.

Tennessee and LSU are almost certain losses this year. I felt that way before the Miami game and feel it even more after that game.

If Lane Kiffin finds out this information Ole Miss will be an even tougher game. I do feel Ole Miss is beatable this year but Lane likes to take it up a notch against Jimbo. He doesn’t need any more reason to want to beat Jimbo.

Jimbo is going to have to either buck a serious road game trend or be perfect at Kyle and JerryWorld to go 8-4 in 2023. Even then that’ll be a massive disappointment yet again.

I’d be curious if anyone at A&M has discussed this with Jimbo. This is VERY concerning since the schedule requires us to go on the road and play games against good teams in the SEC.

How in the hell are we ever going to win the SEC West if we can’t beat 8-4 teams or better in their house? We can’t and we won’t. It’s that simple.

I’m sure Jimbo thinks it’s just some weird data and there’s nothing he needs to do to address it. It’s the ref’s fault, the painted turf, a faked snap cadence, the pH of the water in road stadiums, bed bugs, or whatever else he likes to blame. It sure as hell couldn’t be the fault of the head coach who’s had 22 opportunities.

Unlike Willie I have to imagine deep down inside Jimbo would rather not get on the road again.

Maybe we all need a little of what Willie keeps on his tour bus so the pain of Jimbo’s ineptitude isn’t so sharp…

Shut Up and Win, Jimbo.

R.C. Would Have Gone For 2

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