Head Coach of Texas A&M Football Meets Media
Head coach of Texas A&M football, Jimbo Fisher, met with the media on Monday for his normal game week press conference. You can view the presser below:
Quotes and notes from Texas A&M football head man
On the injury front, Jimbo mentioned that both Le’Veon Moss (who exited the Ole Miss game with what looked like a leg injury) and Max Johnson are “day-to-day,” but he also mentioned he expected that Max would start and was planning for that. Asked later, he said that if Max were not able to play, both Jaylen Henderson and Marcel Reed would see some time at the signal caller spot.
One reporter asked Jimbo about whether they might reconsider some things based on the fact that they’ve now lost a starting QB to injury three years in a row, with it happening twice last year. He said that it doesn’t seem to be the result of any coaching process and is more bad luck, citing the disparity in the types of injuries, as well as the fact that one notably occurred in the open field (Haynes vs. Colorado in 2021) and one more possibly had nothing to do with pressure at all (Haynes turf toe injury last year).
Another reporter asked the head man for Texas A&M football how he keeps belief among the ranks of the team when things go poorly like this. He mentioned that you have to analyze and educate—you have to move out of the bad feeling that something went wrong and analyze why it happened, and then from there break it down and educate the players on what happened. He mentioned that this Texas A&M football team has exhibited good leadership and competitive spirit—they were crushed by the loss emotionally, but there was no finger pointing. There was a drive and will to improve, but no blaming.
One notable development was that there will apparently be no additional punishment handed down from the league to Shemar Turner after what took place on Saturday. Turner took a shot at an Ole Miss player who was standing over him after a play, shoving an… intimate area in Turner’s face, and was tossed from the game. Another significant personnel update from Texas A&M football was that Tony Grimes and Rueben Fatheree are unlikely to play the rest of the year—Grimes has been working through injury, and Fatheree is still recovering strength after a previous injury, not yet being back in playing shape.
Near the end, Jimbo vindicated every opinion I have ever held regarding Pro Football Focus and blocking schemes. I have spoken about this somewhat rarely on this site, but it is insane to me that PFF grades are taken as gospel in the college football ranks. As Jimbo mentioned in the press conference, the people grading each game are literally guessing about who a guy is supposed to block, and hand out a grade based on that. They have no knowledge of the scheme. Case in point, they graded Chase Bisontis as having no missed assignments, but what they didn’t know is that he one time blocked the wrong guy! In the past, they’ve graded him as missing an assignment, when he actually blocked the correct guy. You have to grade based on execution of the actual scheme that’s given, not just how it looks. PFF should not be trusted at the college level—there’s way too much variability. They can correlate to good play, but should not be used as an example or proof of good play.