NFL talent coming out of the Texas A&M Football program isn’t something that is new for Aggie fans in recent memory. Since the 1930s, Texas A&M has had at least a single player taken in nearly every NFL Draft. You could count on a single hand the number of years that this hasn’t happened.
And throughout the start of the 2000s, the Texas A&M Football team was pumping out NFL talent. Between 2000 and 2003, the Aggies produced 18 players who would eventually be selected in the draft.
And this trend would continue through 2008, a year that saw five players drafted. But after the 2005 NFL Draft, things slowed down for the Aggies. In the next seven years, they would only send 21 players to the draft. While that doesn’t seem too bad, it was a noticeable decrease from the norm in College Station.
Texas A&M HC Jimbo Fisher has changed the culture in College Station
If there is a guy who has changed the culture in College Station, it’s Jimbo Fisher.
Without a roster that is filled with Fisher-recruited players, the Texas A&M head football coach has sent 16 players to the league in four years. Most notably, the 2019 Aggies’ NFL Draft class saw seven players taken, the most since in any single class since the early 90s.
What Jimbo Fisher is doing in College Station shouldn’t go overlooked. He’s not only winning on the field, but he’s molding his players into stand-up guys who are ready to play at the next level.
Specifically, the Aggies’ 2021 NFL Draft class exemplified this in a big way.
The Texas A&M Football 2021 NFL Draft class was special, even if it wasn’t flashy
The 2021 Texas A&M Football NFL Draft class doesn’t seem special from a distance. There were only four players taken, a relatively average number for an SEC school of TAMU’s caliber. That said, there were a handful of players who could have been selected returned for an extra year of eligibility.
The players who were taken? Only a single one of them was recruited by Jimbo Fisher — Bobby Brown III. He was the second player taken off of the board after former 5-star Kellen Mond, who was drafted in the third round by the Pittsburgh Steelers.
But those aren’t the important players on this team. The real stars of this draft were two players who were brought in by Kevin Sumlin as 3-star high school prospects and morphed into NFL Draft prospects by Jimbo Fisher.
The first was Buddy Johnson, who was a 3-star linebacker in high school, ranked 352nd in his class overall. He was the 19th-best outside linebacker out of high school, but under Fisher’s defensive system, he would turn into a superstar that is as ready to play at the next level as anybody.
He would be drafted to the same team as another former 3-star Texas A&M player recruited by Kevin Sumlin in Dan Moore. Thanks to Fisher, Moore became a key member of one of the most celebrated offensive lines in the country.
Even the undrafted free agent signings were impressive this year.
The Texas A&M Football team had more undrafted free agents than drafted players
The sentence above may seem like an overwhelming negative at first — nobody wants their players to become undrafted free agents after the NFL Draft. That said, these weren’t just undrafted free agents, they were priority free agents for teams after the draft.
Look at Anthony Hines III as an example of this. The former 4-star recruit brought in by Sumlin played his best football under Fisher, establishing himself as a force as an inside linebacker in the 2019 season. Even with only two full seasons under his belt in the past four years, he was a priority free agent after this draft.
Look at Ryan McCollum and Jared Hocker, both of whom were not recruited by Jimbo Fisher, but become key parts of the offense. Both were 3-star recruits, but the higher-rated of the two was Hocker, who was the 980th best player in his class. Players with these rankings aren’t supposed to make it to the NFL, but Fisher is sending them anyway.
Even Jhamon Ausbon, a receiver who sat out of the 2020 season due to personal reasons related to COVID-19, was immediately picked up following the draft. Fisher turned him into the team’s best receiver, even on an offense that didn’t generate a high amount of receiving yards.
The point here is simple — Jimbo Fisher has created a culture that gives any player who walks onto campus a chance to reach the National Football League.
This won’t just have an impact on existing players, it’ll draw any recruits eyes in the direction of College Station as long as he keeps sending guys to the league.