Ahead of No. 5 Texas A&M’s last regular season game on Saturday, Dec. 19, against Tennessee, A&M coach Jimbo Fisher and players met with the media to discuss the upcoming matchup against the Volunteers.
Here’s what we learned:
Post regular season
The Aggies are still ranked at No. 5 by the College Football Playoff committee. Only Alabama, Notre Dame, Clemson and Ohio State are in front of A&M, thus expectations are high for either a quality bowl game or the playoffs. Bowl game guesses have been abundant and vary from the Aggies facing a Big 12 champion in the Cotton Bowl to playing in the Orange Bowl for the first time since 1944.
Despite the postseason approaching, Fisher said the team is remaining focused on only in-season activity.
“What you do in postseason depends on what you do in-season,” Fisher said. “In-season is not over, we will discuss [post-season] when we’re done. We have to handle in-season, we need to play well and prepare well and then we will handle our business and make decisions.”
Twitter frenzy
A&M football players sent Aggie Twitter into a frenzy on Wednesday, Dec. 9, following the cancellation of the Ole Miss matchup due to COVID-19 developments on the Rebels’ side. Ohio State’s game was also canceled that week, and the eyeball emojis that were tweeted led fans to believe that maybe the Aggies would be taking on Ohio State instead. However, that was not the case.
Sophomore running back Isaiah Spiller said it was a follow-the-leader situation.
“I don’t really know anything about it,” Spiller said. “I kind of just did it because everyone else was doing it… I think it was about us playing Ohio State, but that obviously didn’t happen.”
Recruiting class
The early signing period is almost underway. A&M has begun finding its recruits, under the helm of Fisher. Especially noteworthy is 2021 five-star defensive end Shemar Turner, who announced on his Twitter on Saturday, Dec. 12, that he committed to the Aggies. In addition to others, there are also three-star offensive tackles Remington Strickland and Matthew Wykoff.
Fisher said the maroon and white are confident in their recruiting class.
“We feel very good about our class,” Fisher said. “Love our class, what we think will be our class, you don’t know until it gets to be your class. You can’t speak on them, but there is a lot of guys that we have put our time in that [and] we think are very good football players. We try and get all the positions, we need everything.”