Texas A&M has picked up a commitment from three-star tight end Holden Niemi, a player out of Dexter, Michigan, after coming on with some really strong momentum in recent days. Niemi is their first tight end commit of the 2027 class, and the Aggies made quick work to win out in this recruitment over the likes of Alabama, Michigan, Ohio State, and others.
Niemi is not a highly-rated guy by any service, coming in around the 850s nationally. Of course, when you compare that rating to the kind of offers that he was getting, you start to understand that there's a different story going on than the one that the recruiting services are telling.
While this pickup certainly fills a need for the Aggies— and does so in style with a guy that, by all accounts, brings the exact right mentality— it also shows something that should put Aggie fans' minds at ease when it comes to this upcoming cycle.
Texas A&M's latest pickup further proves that 2027 is not the impending catastrophe of 2022
By now, the demise of the 2022 class is well-documented. Many of the most highly-rated players ended up coming to nothing, and some of those that were productive ended up transferring. You have some stalwarts like Bryce Anderson and Le'Veon Moss, but the Denver Harrises and Chris Marshalls of the world are the more common story.
That has a lot to do with the culture decline under Jimbo Fisher, a story that has been told time after time by this point. Not all of the players were character concerns, but it seems that Fisher ended up prizing player rating over culture fit in that class in particular.
That's part of how the Aggies ended up with so many top-100 players in that cycle: a lot had to do with Texas A&M building momentum and recruiting lights-out, but Fisher was explicitly going for players that had big time profiles online rather than going off of his own evaluations as much as he should have.
The latest pickup for the Aggies in this cycle proves that, despite the highly-rated nature of this class so far, this is not a repeat of the mistakes that Fisher and his staff made in that cycle. Not only does Niemi seem like he's a put-your-head-down-and-work kind of guy, much like a fellow low-rated Aggie player in Taurean York, it also shows that the Aggies are not star-hunting in this cycle.
That's great news for Texas A&M fans, for whom the old aches of that 2022 class are starting to flare up again every time a big commit announces. Mike Elko is doing things differently from top to bottom than the previous regime, and this is just another piece of proof there.
Even so, the Aggies still stand a great chance to land the top recruiting class overall this year, possibly even beating out the eye-popping rating of that 2022 class. To do that with this regime would show not only the power of Texas A&M, but the imminent national championship that this staff will bring.
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