Texas A&M's 'recipe,' not ingredients are key to success

Texas A&M football approaches a crucial year under head coach Jimbo Fisher in 2023. The Aggies made all sorts of noise back in the 2022 spring after landing the No. 1 recruiting class and coming off a year where they toppled Alabama. Alas, A&M faltered royally last fall and now enter a must-win year for Fisher.

In his most consequential season yet, Fisher is taking a big swing by going older to fix the team’s offensive issues when most staffs are getting younger on that side of the ball. It’s no slight to Bobby Petrino, who has typically been a wizard of a play-caller at the college level, but his age and rocky background certainly raise some questions.

For On3’s JD PicKell, the question isn’t whether the Aggies have the talent to right the ship, but whether the Fisher-Petrino combo is capable of molding this skilled and athletic group of football players into a true SEC contender. On the On3 YouTube channel, PicKell laid out a full culinary analogy explaining why it’s not the personnel that’s the question for Texas A&M, but rather, the coaching.

You can watch that breakdown right here or read his full comments on the Aggies below:

JD PicKell says Texas A&M has ingredients necessary to compete in SEC

“Here’s what I would say for Texas A&M — and we talked about this on a live show the other day — they understand that the ingredients weren’t the problem last year, it’s the recipe. And if you’re making a meal, I would much rather have to switch up that recipe a little bit, maybe mix up how I put the ingredients together, rather than just not have the ingredients all together, right.

“Because if I’m making a burger and I don’t have ground beef, no recipe is going to account for that. Okay, now I do have ground beef and maybe the burger doesn’t turn out how I want it to, I gotta adjust the recipe. I gotta maybe add a little less salt. I gotta maybe add a little more spice, maybe switch up how I’m, you know, cooking this burger. Like, I can do that. I can’t go out and get new ingredients like that.

“I guess you kind of can with the transfer portal, but they don’t have to because of what they have in-house. You don’t have to go get new ingredients. You got good ingredients. The recipe now is on Bobby Petrino and Jimbo Fisher to put it together, bottom line, period, mic drop. That’s what’s going on.

“So for Texas A&M, they can go as far as they want to go. In my eyes, some things got to come together, but they can definitely be a team that makes noise in the SEC.

“They’ve heard all the talk in the offseason. They’ve heard everything that’s been said about them. They know. They also know within that fan base and within that locker room exactly what they could accomplish based on what that roster has.

“So the fans, a little bit irritated that Jimbo Fisher hasn’t been able to accomplish what they hoped he would at this point. But even so, like I said, a lot of ability there to get it done.”