Largely off the national radar, the Aggies recruiting class was salvaged with an impressive final month
The dust has settled on National Signing Day, and unlike last year, Texas A&M is not the talk of the town. The Aggies did not sign a historic class, there’s no unprecedented slew of five-star recruits headed to College Station. In fact, this is the lowest-ranked class Jimbo Fisher has signed since his transition class in 2018. Despite all this, the Aggies quietly had one of the more impressive closings to a class this year. You’ll hear a lot about what was done by schools like Texas and Oregon, and for good reason. But with as many things that went wrong for A&M on and off the field this fall, recruiting this month went decidedly right.
December recruiting by the numbers:
- 7 total commits: A&M entered December with only 11 commits, and had not gotten a new one in over two months. When nearly 40% of your class commits in the final three weeks, that’s a strong finish.
- 4 blue chip offensive skill players: A popular talking point for much of the fall was how the Aggies did not have a single offensive skill position player in this year’s class. They then proceeded to add five-star RB Rueben Owens, four-star QB Marcel Reed, four-star TE Jaden Platt and four-star WR Micah Tease.
- 4 Power 4 flips: Those aforementioned blue chip players weren’t just commits, they were guys the Ags convinced to decommit from other schools, coming from Louisville, Ole Miss, Stanford and Arkansas, respectively. Adding to your talent pool while taking from SEC West foes is icing on the cake.
- 0 decommits: Much has been made of the “portal exodus” at A&M, and the transfer portal departures have certainly created some virtually nonexistent depth at certain positions. But don’t overlook the fact that in addition to A&M adding a huge chunk of their class in December, they also managed to keep the rest of the group intact. Especially when guys like five-star DL D.J. Hicks (Oregon) and four-star CB Bravion Rogers (TCU) had major pushes from other schools right until the end, keeping the negative recruiters at bay could end up paying major dividends.
A&M’s class is ranked No. 13 nationally as of today, but is actually No. 9 in the country in average rating per recruit (91.64). Perhaps just as notably, that average is higher than three of Jimbo’s five previous classes, and higher than the average in ANY recruiting class brought in under Kevin Sumlin. So if you think this class represents a significant decline in the level of talent added to the roster under Jimbo, well, you’d be wrong. It’s not a historic class, and there were some well-publicized misses (cough Anthony Hill cough) but it’s also not devoid of impact players. Not even close. And if this is A&M hitting rock bottom, then watch out for what they can do on their climb back up.