Jimbo Fisher explains why Texas A&M is so young in his fifth year with program

After an exciting offseason where Jimbo Fisher and Texas A&M landed the top recruiting class, there were high expectations for the Aggies in 2022. To this point, Texas A&M hasn’t come close to meeting those expectations and needs to win its final three games to become bowl eligible.

Blaming problems like the ones that Texas A&M on any one problem would be to oversimplify things too much. However, it’s clear that there are several issues working in tandem. One of those problems is the age of the roster, which is incredibly young. This means that the team hasn’t had time to develop. However, in Jimbo Fisher’s fifth season, why is the roster so young?

“You have guys coming out early in the draft,” Jimbo Fisher said. “I think you have the transfer portal, and I think we recruited well and you have some really good young players who their way through.”

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Jimbo Fisher also wanted to point out that, while Texas A&M is a prominent example of a team who might be suffering in terms of experience because of these issues, it’s also not alone.

“And I think you’ve seen a lot of teams across the country at times–I think you’re gonna see this more periodically, now that that the transfer portal has come in–transfers, young guys playing, getting recruiting classes.”

This is also, according to Jimbo Fisher, not a new phenomenon in college sports. Basketball has already been hit by it.

“That’s going to be periodically–that’s how it happened in basketball. Once it all hit, you see all those great programs, guys aren’t staying or if they’re not playing, they’re not staying,” Jimbo Fisher said.

“I think, hopefully, you can get guys to do that, but I think in time this is gonna periodically–I mean, you look at some of your top teams right now, they’re playing tons of guys. It was funny, when we played Alabama, two corners are true freshmen. You know, when have you ever seen that? When have you ever seen they had a redshirt freshman quarterback a year ago–we had a fresh, and I’m just using them [Alabama] for an example was jumped in my head. Some d-linemen, some of those young folk when Anderson was playing, all those guys.”

It’s worth pointing out that Jimbo Fisher isn’t necessarily making excuses for his team being too young to compete. He’s trying to say that having a young team is a new reality in the sport that teams and coaches have to adjust to going forward.

“You get some of these high-profile guys, you’re playing a lot of young guys and you’re going to. And, I think it’s going to be what’s going to happen more and more across college football, as you’ll see in the next three, four, five, six years–if the rules don’t change.”

Jimbo Fisher on Conner Weigman’s status

Conner Weigman, a five-star freshman quarterback in the Class of 2022, wasn’t able to play against Florida because of the flu. Now, Jimbo Fisher gave an update on his health.

“I wouldn’t say that (we’re over the flu), there’s still some cases of it but that’s part of it. I wish it was all gone. There’s a lot of them that are out permanent that you know of and there are others that are just day-by-day, I can’t answer that right now,” Jimbo Fisher said.

“They cleared him [Weigman], he had IVs all weekend, took all that stuff, he’ll practice today.”