Jimbo Fisher eyeing a return to coaching

Best I can tell, this fall will be Jimbo Fisher's first away from college football since 1984, between his graduation from Liberty High School in Clarksburg, W. Va., and his transfer from Clemson (where he was to play baseball) to Salem University, where he would eventually become the Division III national player of the year while playing quarterback for Terry Bowden.

The move from Clemson to Salem, from baseball to football, began essentially a long, unbroken run of Fisher as one of the most highly-regarded offensive minds in college football. Renowned for his approach to offense and quarterback play, he was an offensive coordinator by age 25, an SEC assistant by 27, an FBS coordinator by 28, and an SEC coordinator by 34. Fisher won a national championship under Nick Saban at LSU and almost single-handedly revived Florida State football culminating in a dominant run to the 2013 national championship, all of which culminated in his revolutionary 10-year, $75 million, fully guaranteed contract from Texas A&M in the winter of 2017.

The Texas A&M years weren't all bad. His first season saw the Aggies rise from unranked to No. 16 by year's end, despite facing No. 2 Clemson and No. 1 Alabama within his first four games. The 2020 team went 9-1, won the Orange Bowl, and earned Texas A&M's highest year-end rank (No. 4) since its 1939 national championship.

But, still, it's hard to regarded an era that began with a fully guaranteed 10-year contract and ended before the completion of Year 6 as anything other than a failure. And so Fisher, due $76 million upon firing and $19.2 million of which has already been paid to him, will send this year on the proverbial sidelines instead of the literal ones. The contract, once a great reward for decades of innovative work, became his undoing. After 70 games in maroon and white, it's all anyone remembers from his six years in College Station. 

In an appearance on ESPN Radio Monday morning, Fisher said he's eyeing a return to the game for the 2025 season.

It'll be interesting to see: A) what sort of market Fisher generates this winter, and B) what he learns from a season of film study.

Let's tackle Point B first. Once considered an innovator, Fisher's offensive philosophy grew stale over time. His 2022 team, the last year before handing over the offense to Bobby Petrino, ran only 757 plays in 12 games -- the ninth-fewest in the sport. His teams were almost always at or near the bottom on fourth down attempts. His handling of quarterbacks, seen as tough love when times were good, appeared more like brow-beating toward the end. And his playbook was NFL-style complicated in an age where his peers found ways to make things as simple as possible.

"Last season I went into A&M and Jimbo wanted to keep his terminology, and I didn't sleep for months. It was hard," Petrino said last year. "I was studying every night, trying to figure this out, and wondering why are we calling it this way?"

So, it'll be interesting to see what Fisher learns over the course of this season. His study of other coaches should be balanced by a vigorous self-study. He needs to evaluate his coaching approach from top to bottom.

It'll also be interesting to see who's interested in Jimbo, and what Jimbo is interested in doing. All options seem equally plausible. Maybe he desires an analyst job working on a buddy's staff, where he can out of the spotlight and do nothing but watch film draw up plays. He can certainly afford to do that. Then again, Jimbo enjoys recruiting (or at least he did at one time), so maybe he wants to get out on the road again, get his hands dirty once again in the nitty-gritty of QB coaching, and take a coordinator job. 

Or perhaps Jimbo, stewing over these past eight months of unemployment, thought to himself he'd trade a whole bunch of those millions away in exchange for a chance to reclaim his reputation as an elite program-builder. Maybe he's determined to take a third crack at head coaching.

All of the above seem equally plausible. 

If Jimbo wants a job this winter, he'll get one. But what job it is likely depends on what he learns in the first season of his adult life away from college football -- about the game, and about himself.