How to fix Texas A&M? Jimbo Fisher should take a page from Brian Kelly's turnaround at Notre Dame
COLLEGE STATION — Texas A&M hasn’t lost this many consecutive games since Richard Nixon was running the nation, and you know how that regime ended.
Tricky Jim — that's fifth-year head coach Jimbo Fisher — is now neck deep in his own jumble, but there is a way out of the woods for the Aggies entering 2023. It will require some serious adjustments, however, corrections that already have cranked up with the recent crackdown of actual suspensions of disruptive players.
Formerly freewheeling A&M has lost six straight games for the first time in 50 years, a streak that should come to a merciless end Saturday when the Aggies (3-7, 1-6 SEC) host Massachusetts (1-9), which doesn’t compete in a league. A&M, not eligible for a bowl for the first time since 2008 in then-coach Mike Sherman’s first season, later closes out its lost season the night of Nov. 26 against SEC West champion LSU at Kyle Field. “I don’t know if this is bad,” said A&M senior receiver Jalen Preston, in choosing his words uncarefully. “But (we want to) piss in their Corn Flakes, you know? That’s what we want to do.”
Toppling the Tigers in what amounts to A&M’s bowl this season would at least head things in the right direction in what might shape up as a tumultuous offseason, although Fisher does not appear headed anywhere else soon with nine years remaining on a fully guaranteed contract paying more than $9 million annually. In other words, no impeachment process by fuming boosters is forthcoming, considering the about $85 million payout attached to such a farcical contract. When Fisher glances across Kyle’s grass at LSU that Thanksgiving weekend, he need only use first-year Tigers coach Brian Kelly as an example of how an entrenched coach can rebound from a bad record.
Kelly’s 2016 Notre Dame squad finished 4-8 — the Aggies’ current course — before the Fighting Irish responded with a 10-3 record the following season, his eighth in South Bend. How did they do it? Kelly started with a painfully long look in the mirror, and stepping away from running his offense to step headlong into running his team.
“We failed and I failed,” Kelly told Sports Illustrated in the offseason following 4-8, and why he brought onboard a new offensive coordinator and new defensive coordinator and in total 17 new staff members. The bold moves paid big dividends, and Kelly was 54-9 over his next five seasons at Notre Dame before leaving for LSU nearly a year ago. Here’s what to expect from Fisher early in the offseason: The announcement of a true offensive coordinator to run that side of the ball, according to multiple insiders, allowing Fisher to pay more attention to the details of running a program in the era of wide-open transfers and name, image and likeness (NIL) goings-on for empowered players.
First-year defensive coordinator DJ Durkin likely is OK heading into 2023, considering the Aggies rank 39th nationally in scoring defense (allowing 22.2 points per game) despite their many ills in slowing the run. Durkin has sparkled in comparison to play-caller Fisher’s offense, which ranks 108th nationally out of 131 teams in scoring (21.5 ppg).
In 2016, seven of Notre Dame’s eight losses were by 4.6 points per game, and none of those seven were by more than one score. Sound familiar? Four of A&M’s seven losses have been by four points or less, including at then-No. 1 Alabama on Oct. 8, and five of the seven were by an average of 3.8 points per game.
“Is it far away? It can be, but it’s also very close, too,” Fisher said of getting competitive once again in the SEC. “It’s not like it’s unreachable … when the (players) can see they can stay right here and do it — I believe our players believe that 100 percent.”
That is Fisher’s next big task: Convincing the majority of players in his top-rated class of 2022 to stick with the Aggies instead of seeking wins and glory and NIL deals elsewhere.
“You’ve got to keep grinding and grinding and grinding,” Fisher said of his message to his players going through A&M’s first losing season in 14 years.
A&M and Fisher have levied a bevy of suspensions of late, too, including four freshmen in perhaps finally running a much more disciplined program than he has in his first four years in College Station. The idea being if a touted player refuses to conform to rules, he’s not needed in the program, anyway.
A scant two years ago, A&M sat at 8-1 in the pandemic-shortened regular season and was in the mix as one of the four teams in the 2020 College Football Playoff. The CFP committee ultimately pegged Kelly’s Irish over Fisher’s Aggies in a decision still prompting A&M fans to snarl.
“It will get back in gear to where it needs to be,” Fisher promised of his program that has the worst SEC record among the league’s 14 teams (by percentage points over Vanderbilt).
Kelly was effusive following the 2016 season that he had messed up and needed to get things right in his program. Fisher has not yet reached that stage of self-effacement, but perhaps it will come in the offseason.
One thing is certain in a wildly uncertain era under Fisher: A huge dose of humility could not hurt as he tries squaring away his flailing program starting with, like Kelly, kindly stepping away from an awful offense.
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