No risk produces no reward last two weeks
Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher swears he believes in his players, why he prickled when asked his message to fans and donors tired of mediocrity under his watch.
“It’s the same thing I said to our kids, they ain’t hurting no more than our kids are, those players in that locker room,” Fisher said following the Aggies’ 20-13 loss at No. 17 Tennessee on Saturday. “Don’t put them above the players. I love our players, I love our fans and I love our people who give money. But those kids are what’s important … those kids are hurting … and we’ve got to find a way to help them.
“We’ve got to coach them better and get them to play better and get them to play in critical moments better, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
Fisher could start by believing in his players when they’re on the field instead of slump-shouldered postgame in a locker room — and A&M’s sixth-year coach is sliding into Dennis Franchione territory when it comes to playing not to lose in a conference game.
The Aggies (4-3, 2-2 SEC), who are off Saturday before hosting South Carolina at 11 a.m. on Oct. 28, have lost their last two games to No. 11 Alabama and Tennessee by an average of 6.5 points.
Both quite winnable contests in which Fisher’s belief — or disbelief — in his offense came into question on multiple occasions.
The starkest example occurred late in the third quarter against Alabama at Kyle Field on Oct. 7 in a 17-17 game. The Aggies faced a fourth-and-one on the Alabama 45-yard line and Fisher elected to punt. A&M’s Nik Constantinou promptly booted the ball into the end zone, and the Aggies netted all of 25 yards in kindly backing off of trying to grab a late lead.
“We were tied up, and they just had (gotten) momentum in the game,” Fisher explained. “… If it hadn’t been a full yard, if it had been inside a yard, we probably would have went (for it). … I thought our defense played great the whole time, and I thought we would get the ball back and play.”
CBS Sports analyst Gary Danielson, who called the Aggies’ last two games against the Crimson Tide and Volunteers, said A&M fans shouldn’t buy into the adage “if you don’t believe you can get a yard you don’t believe you can win” — at least not in this case.
“I would have preferred he went for it, but I can understand his thinking,” Danielson said. “Just because you punt, doesn’t mean you’re
not playing to win the game. There should not be a connection of not going for it and not playing to win the game — there are different strategies in the game.”
Fisher had gone for it on fourth-and-one on the Aggies’ opening possession of the game from the Alabama 19-yard line, in trying to make a statement of aggression early (quarterback Max Johnson threw incomplete), but Fisher backed off that aggression in a tight game with the fourth quarter around the corner.
To the clenched teeth of thousands of A&M fans, too, Fisher elected to run out the clock at the end of the first half against both Alabama and Tennessee, in bypassing chances to run what amounted to a twominute offense to try and add to narrow leads in each game.
Fisher not only eased off the gas in both situations he slammed on the brakes, happy to lead two ranked teams at the break (leads the Aggies would relinquish over the final two quarters).
“They were not aggressive enough,” Danielson said of Fisher’s strategy against Alabama in particular. “But that does not mean he’s not playing to win the game.”
Fisher explained afterward, too, of why he was happy for Johnson to take a knee against Tennessee with the Aggies’ final drive of the first half starting on the A&M 11-yard line. He could have called a timeout with about a minute and a half remaining but allowed the Volunteers to punt with the clock winding down.
“Going two-minute (drill) before the half with less than a minute is not smart, that’s not a thing to do,” he said, ignoring that more time would have remained had he used a timeout prior to the punt. “We had a lead and we had the ball coming out of the second half, so we didn’t want to take a chance.”
Fisher, 58, was hired six years ago from Florida State to swash buckle his way to the Aggies’ first SEC crown, and he’s against the ropes these days in Aggieland based on last year’s 5-7 finish and this year’s .500 showing halfway through SEC play.
The mood around A&M is similar to the deflation late in the tenure of Franchione — hired from Alabama 20 years ago to win Big 12 titles — and some fans are still mad about a couple of short fourthdown situations in which Franchione elected to punt against Oklahoma at Kyle Field in 2006.
In an eventual 17-16 loss to the Sooners, Franchione elected to boot two field goals in the final eight minutes, one on a fourth-and-goal from the OU 2-yard line and the other on fourth-and-6 from the Sooners 22-yard line with 3:30 remaining, and the Aggies trailing by four.
An overly cautious Franchione lost the allegiance of thousands of fans that day, and he was fired a year later for consistent averageness over five seasons.
“If he was trying to beat the spread, he did a bang-up job,” Hearst Newspapers columnist Mike Finger wrote that fateful day of Franchione. “But as far as beating Bob Stoops? He had the chips, and he had the cards. But not the guts.”
Stoops’ Sooners put away the Aggies in that memorable game with their own fourth-andshort conversion from the OU 30-yard line with 1:29 remaining. Stoops afterward said he believed in his players.
“I looked at all the offensive guys in their eyes,” he said, “and I thought, ‘I can’t punt it.’”
Much has changed in college football in the 17 years since, but questioning an A&M coach’s guts and judgment with a league game on the line? A&M fans can count on it no matter the conference.