It wasn't different after all

When Jimbo Fisher took over as head coach at Texas A&M in 2018, he liked to say "It ain't gonna be like it used to", a pointed rebuke at former coach Kevin Sumlin.

In retrospect, it may have been a whole lot closer to what it was used to than Jimbo wanted.

Sumlin, who had a reputation of having a huge ego, wanting to do things his way and being a hard partier, had great success early on, got a big extension and then crashed and burned. Fisher, who had a reputation of having a huge ego, wanting to do things his way and eating, drinking and sleeping football, saw his A&M career follow a similar path.

Neither man probably liked what came out about them Wednesday, as Johnny Manziel gave a harsh assessment of his former coach and Fisher's way of doing business was skewered by Houston-area high school coaches in an article in The Athletic.

It was just a reminder of the cold reality Aggies now recognize: both men allowed their egos to overwhelm common sense, especially when it came to their offenses. Their inability, or outright refusal, to adjust doomed them.

When Sumlin took over for Mike Sherman in late 2011, nobody realized he had walked into a gold mine. He had a quarterback who was redshirting in Johnny Manziel, and redshirting wideout named Mike Evans. He had what would become the best offensive line in college football history, and a defense filled with experienced players.

The Aggies went 11-2 in 2012 and Manziel won the Heisman. With the benefit of hindsight, the 2012 is now considered one of the best ones ever not to win a national title.

Instead of recognizing the job the offensive line, Manziel, Sherman, offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury did and the benefit of sheer luck, Sumlin took all the credit for himself.

Appearing on Shannon Sharpe's Club Shay Shay podcast Wednesday, Manziel -- the greatest player in Aggie history -- discussed how Sumlin's ego, which was already huge after his success at Houston, ballooned after the successes in 2012 and 2013.

Manziel told Sharpe that his father (unbeknownst to him) told Sumlin he'd make sure the Heisman winning quarterback would stay through 2014 if he was paid $3 million. Sumlin blew him off. When Kingsbury -- who had been with Sumlin from their days at Houston -- asked for a pay raise, Sumlin also responded negatively. Kingsbury then took the head job at Texas Tech.

“He had this ego about him that what we built — WE — was all him,” Manziel said of Sumlin.

That ego caused a massive disaster at the end of the 2015 season, when not one, but two, elite quarterbacks walked out the door in the span of a week. Kyle Allen, the nation's top quarterback in the 2014 class, had won the starting job but had been benched in favor of Kyler Murray, the son of Aggie Kevin Murray, at midseason. That came after Allen hurt his shoulder against Alabama, but started the next game at Ole Miss because Murray had been suspended for a game.

It was a disaster. Allen went 12-34 for 88 yards and interception, clearly in pain when he sat on the sideline in a 23-3 loss. After the game, in spite of what everyone had seen, Sumlin insisted Allen was fine and just didn't play well.

He was benched for Murray the next week.

After playing well in a 35-28 win over South Carolina, Murray struggled against Auburn in a 26-10 loss and completed 22 of 39 passes for 191 yards and 3 touchdowns (and 2 interceptions) in a 41-17 win over Western Carolina. Allen came in in the fourth quarter, went 6-6 for 98 yards and a touchdown and was back in the starting role the next weekend.

A&M finished with a shutout win over Vanderbilt and a 19-7 loss at LSU with Allen at the helm. After the season was over, Kevin Murray met with Sumlin and demanded changes to help his son. Sumlin bluntly told him that wasn't happening -- which actually sounded like the way to do things at the time. Kyler Murray promptly transferred to Oklahoma.

Allen didn't bother meeting with Sumlin. He just left.

Manziel's comment about how everything "was all him" makes those events take on a different context now. Kevin Murray is no good guy and clearly handled things wrong, but Sumlin wasn't going to change. Allen wasn't going to sit around and find out what the guy who humiliated him on national television had planned for 2016.

One thing Sumlin was going to do is change both coordinators. He brought in John Chavis from LSU and Noel Mazzone from UCLA. Both crashed and burned, with Chavis having the misfortune of having his defense frequently back on the field quickly because Sumlin refused to slow down his up-tempo scheme.

There were problems off the field too. Sumlin's partying ways were commonly known and are still discussed in College Station today. That made it difficult for Manziel to take him seriously when the coach told the quarterback he needed to get on the straight and narrow.

“I think where our relationship fell out a little bit was: How do you have a guy who’s a grown man — I look back on this now, reflective on this — how do you have a guy who’s a grown man, telling me what I should do? Obviously, my coach, my guy I’m looking up to, my head football coach is telling me to live a certain way and put all this partying behind you, but if you know anything about Kevin Sumlin and what he’s doing behind the scenes …,” Manziel said Wednesday.

The partying nearly got Sumlin fired after the 2016 season ended in disastrous fashion. A 7-win season did him in in 2017 -- but he still had his offense.

After firing Sumlin, A&M athletic director Scott Woodward turned to an old friend: national championship-winning head coach Jimbo Fisher at FSU. When Fisher arrived in Aggieland, it was considered a coup -- but rumblings followed from Tallahassee that Fisher could be stubborn, standoffish and refused to consider changing anything he did -- especially with his offense.

From a reporter's perspective, Fisher was a breath of fresh air compared to the sneering, standoffish Sumlin. If you asked him a question, he was liable to go back 20 years or more to explain his thinking on something. It was different, and different was good.

The results on the field were different too. The Aggies went 9-4 and did something Sumlin never did: beat LSU. They also blew out N.C. State in the Gator Bowl, 52-13. Relying on running back Trayvon Williams and slower offense, the Aggies wore opponents out.

Concerns emerged in 2019, when a less-experienced offensive line struggled to protect quarterback Kellen Mond and Mond's play stagnated year-over-year. After starting 3-3, the Aggies finished 8-5 but were obliterated in their final regular season game at LSU.

Things got a lot better in 2020, as a veteran Aggie team went 9-1 and won the Orange Bowl. With an experienced starter in Mond -- who improved markedly -- two NFL-caliber backs in Isaiah Spiller and Devon Achane, a much better offensive line and jack of all trades Ainias Smith, the Aggies used a physical style to wear opponents down. Fisher seemed to be having the last laugh, as A&M ended ranked fourth in the nation, their highest finish since 1939.

But things started to come apart in 2021, as Fisher's scheme was too much for backup Zach Calzada, who was thrust onto the field in the second game at Colorado after Haynes King broke his ankle. Even with Spiller and Achane, the Aggie offense stumbled to 71st in the nation and 56th in scoring offense, largely wasting a great performance by the defense, led by Mike Elko.

2022, of course, was the disaster. Fisher went for the biggest fish in the pond, ignoring warnings about personality problems and going for the most talented players in the nation. It backfired as the "loose in the head gang" made the locker room toxic and King, Max Johnson and Conner Weigman all dealt with frustrating results due to Fisher's offense. Talented or not, opponents had caught up with A&M's scheme and could gameplan against it. Essentially, they knew what was coming.

Before the 2023 season, I said Fisher could either adapt and win the easy way or he could stick with his way and make things harder, just so he might be able to say, "I told you so." When he hired Bobby Petrino to take over as offensive coordinator and playcaller, it looked like he was, after all, willing to adapt.

Wrong.

While Fisher happily told reporters Petrino was calling the plays, he neglected to mention that it was still within constraints of his offense. The Aggies improved to 24th in scoring offense, but good defenses still found ways to shut A&M down. And Fisher's refusal to fire offensive line coach Steve Addazio, who was a bust in 2022, helped lead to the offensive line giving up an average of 2.3 sacks per game and Weigman and Johnson both being knocked out with season-ending injuries.

There were other issues too. The disaster that was the 2022 recruiting class; Fisher's inability to try to connect with Texas high school coaches, to the point he would skip the coach's association's annual meeting, where all other in-state college coaches spoke; inconsistent discipline and a refusal to dump coaches who weren't doing their job.

In short, Fisher -- like Sumlin -- came across to many as arrogant and out of touch.

That didn't come as a surprise to Houston area high school coaches, apparently. They teed off on Fisher in Wednesday's article in The Athletic, with some saying Jimbo had no interest in developing a relationship with coaches who could help him land elite in-state talent.

"I don’t think the previous staff, particularly the head coach, understood how it works here," one coach said.

Another said Fisher wanted to go national at the expense of his relationships with coaches in Texas.

"I don’t think Jimbo ever connected with the high school coaches. Their recruiting approach did not follow the traditional path … it was more about finding the who’s who, signing big-named guys and not truly evaluating them," one coach said.

"A&M didn’t come by as much under Jimbo. They mostly only called on the phone," another coach said. "I guess they had better things to do than go by every school and probably just concentrated on what they were doing."

The refusal to adapt, from his offense to how he did business with other coaches, led to Fisher's firing last November. But he still had his offense.

If anything is going to sink Mike Elko, it won't be his offense. He doesn't care about it. That's Collin Klein's turf. Elko is a defensive guy, who had the Aggies ranked third in the nation in total defense in 2021 before leaving for Duke.

Once there, Elko did what many thought was impossible and made Duke into a winning program. He went 17-9 in two seasons, in spite of injuries causing problems in 2023. When he arrived in College Station, he immediately fired assistants Dameyune Craig and Addazio and started talking about developing the character of the program.

"My vision for this program is very simple. We are going to build the premier football program in the country," he said. "We are not going to talk about it anymore. We are going to be about it."

In a pointed departure from his former boss, Elko said twice during his opening comments when he was introduced as A&M's head coach that his staff would work closely with Texas high school coaches.

"We're in the state of Texas. And the state of Texas is the elite football state for high school football in the country, right? So we have got to make sure that we are taking our time and going in and seeing the coaches, spending time with the coaches," he said.

One high school coach told The Athletic they thought Elko would "connect and resonate" with Texas coaches, which Fisher never did.

Elko has not publicly mentioned Fisher by name since taking over, but has said multiple times he intends to change how Aggie football does business.

"We will become the absolute best version of ourself as quickly as possible, because the best version of Texas A&M football wins the national championship," he said.

Now that would be different.