Texas A&M Football: Will Jimbo Fisher give up playcalling?
Frustration with the Texas A&M Football team’s offense has been slowly growing among both fans and outsiders for quite some time now. Even after a 2020 season that saw the Aggies finish with, per SP+, the 10th-best offense in the nation, criticisms were widespread about a lack of explosiveness in the A&M attack. Here’s what Patrick Mayhorn of The Outside Zone had to say following the 2020 opener against Vanderbilt in an article about Texas A&M and Notre Dame’s offenses:
"Watching them play, it almost feels like the offenses have an imaginary box around them, spanning from five yards behind the line of scrimmage to about 20 yards down the field. Any play that goes for more than 20 yards is almost certainly a result of a player breaking out of the scheme, not being enabled by it to make those plays."
He continues:
"Fisher famously plans out just about every part of his offense, has a massive playbook and runs what sportswriters love to call an NFL style offense, which is code for an offense that’s purposefully obtuse and confusing, so that it looks impressive to dummies. The result of that sort of thing when you lack elite talent at every single position and a really smart quarterback to run it all is what Texas A&M has now."
That’s pretty scathing. Now, I definitely have a bone to pick with some of the assertions here— the 2020 A&M offense ended up being quite good, as I said— but I feel like this is representative of the type of criticism trotted out against Jimbo’s system.
The building frustration came to a head last Saturday after a putrid offensive performance in a horrendous loss to the Appalachian State Mountaineers. The Aggies mustered only 186 yards of total offense on only 38 plays on the day – both marks inexcusable. This led to reporters putting the question to Jimbo of whether he would give up the offensive playcalling following this debacle.
Jimbo Fisher said he would consider handing over the play calling to someone else, if he thought it would be what it took to win.
— 𝕋𝕣𝕒𝕧𝕚𝕤 𝕃. 𝔹𝕣𝕠𝕨𝕟 (@Travis_L_Brown) September 12, 2022
Well, “I’d consider it” is definitely not a “no”. It’s more than plenty of fans thought he’d say. But would he really consider turning over the reins to someone else? Is that even a possibility?