Aggies' Jimbo Fisher Hints At OC Bobby Petrino Calling Plays
At SEC Media Days last week, Texas A&M Aggies head coach Jimbo Fisher was pretty hush-hush whenever asked about the 2023 play-caller. That was until he hopped on The Paul Finebaum Show on July 17.
"As a head coach you're still going to be involved," Fisher said. "Does Nick (Saban) call defenses? He doesn't call defenses. Kirby doesn't call defenses, and I say that from a point that it's not that hard. It's really not because you're going to be in the meetings and what's going on in your team, and you make collective ideas about what you're going to do and how you're going to do it. But then you turn it over to guys you have confidence in the job you hired them to do. Let them do their job."
Fisher said this wouldn't be the first time he hasn't called plays, saying sometimes at Florida State he would allow others to do so. Fisher added that he won't completely exclude himself from the offense if offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino calls plays.
"You're still right there on every play and what you do and how you're doing it," Fisher said. "You know what they're calling, and it's in the narrative of how you're attacking the team and the things that go in. It's not as big a deal as people make it out to be."
The Aggies' head coach of five years said relinquishing play-calling duties in practice has "freed" him to take care of other matters within the "changing" college football landscape.
The Clarksburg, West Virginia native said he has confidence in Petrino to run the offensive room and the meetings. Fisher said a head coach has to have the self-reflective abilities to turn play-calling duties over when something isn't working because those who don't, "their programs go down very quickly."
"If there's issues you can't fix, you don't know what's going on to do those things," Fisher said. "As a head coach, you're still a CEO of a company. You have the direction of where you want to go and what you do, but you hire people to do it."
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