Texas A&M Football: Jimbo Fisher’s Biggest Recruiting Success in ’22

The most impressive recruiting job this year?

It wasn’t bringing in two highly-touted offensive line prospects, with two intriguing talents at the position besides.  Nor was it going from zero offensive skill position players committed to the Texas A&M football program in mid-November to pulling in 5 top-300 players at QB, WR, TE, and RB, including 5-star Rueben Owens and a last-minute flip from the two-time national champion Georgia Bulldogs.  Nor still was it holding on to highly-rated defensive commit Jayvon Thomas despite late overtures from rival schools.  It wasn’t even pulling in the top-rated DL in the country—again—in David Hicks.

Jimbo Fisher’s best recruiting job this cycle was the players on his current roster.

Jimbo Fisher’s best recruiting job this cycle was the players on his current roster.

After a widely-maligned 2022 season that resulted in a 5-7 record and projections from every media outlet desperate for a click that all the five-star freshmen from their record-setting recruiting class would be departing, the Aggies barely lost any starting talent whatsoever.  The following is a list of players who started the final game of the season who won’t be returning to the Texas A&M football program, along with their reason for departure:

• RB Devon Achane (NFL Draft)
• CB Jaylon Jones (NFL Draft)
• S Antonio Johnson (NFL Draft)

That’s it.  That’s the list.

Freshmen phenoms Evan Stewart and Conner Weigman aren’t going anywhere.  Nor are Walter Nolen, Shemar Stewart, LT Overton, Le’Veon Moss, Kam Dewberry, and many more besides.  Sure, a few freshmen hit the portal, but nowhere near the amount that so many self-styled prognosticators had gleefully imagined.

Yes, the future of the program is in good hands with these young freshmen who chose to stay the course.  But even more impressive and needed were the elder statesmen of the program who decided to forego the NFL draft and return to the Texas A&M football program for the 2023 season.  McKinnley Jackson, Demani Richardson, Layden Robinson, and Ainias Smith’s returns represent a huge victory for this coaching staff.  There is no substitute for experience in college football—much less a league like the SEC— and these four leaders have it in spades.

There is no substitute for experience in college football—much less a league like the SEC— and these four leaders have it in spades.

There are detractors who will say that these four guys wouldn’t have been high-round picks anyway. It’s true that it’s not as if any of these guys would have been first-rounders had they declared.  But the point still stands that that hasn’t seemed to stop some players in the past from declaring early, despite the fact that they likely would—and indeed did—go undrafted.  Who knows what difference a senior Quartney Davis and Kendrick Rogers would have made in the 2020 season? A senior Anthony Hines and Buddy Johnson in 2021?

Especially in the age of NIL, retaining these players was a must.  Would a UDFA contract really be that much better than starting in the SEC for one more year, with all the opportunities that now brings?  One would think this would be an easy sell, but you still have to get across the finish line in these “re-recruitments.” The Texas A&M football coaching staff deserves credit for doing just that. Of course, you would’ve loved to keep even the three other players who ended up declaring in Achane, Jones, and Johnson, but two of those three were a much tougher pull, as they project well into the higher rounds, and in the case of Achane, the shelf life of RBs in the league continues to diminish.  Even so, both Achane and Jones gave serious thought to the prospect of returning.

These four players, as much as any of the five-star freshmen (soon to be sophomores) will figure extremely prominently into the pivotal 2023 campaign.  The magnitude of this upcoming season for the future of the program cannot be understated, and for what was looking like it would be yet another young team, the challenge seemed gargantuan. But this makes it 19 out of 22 starters coming back. The entire offensive and defensive lines; the QB of the future in Conner Weigman; all three WRs; your top TEs; your starting LBs in Edgerrin Cooper and Chris Russell… This suddenly looks once more like a team with the right blend of experience and talent to contend for a division title. And after the season they just had, they need to do just that.