Jimbo Fisher believes his secondary gained confidence after picking off four passes against Texas State
Texas A&M’s biggest weakness last season was its secondary.
The Aggies finished with the SEC’s best run defense in league play in Mike Elko’s first season calling the defense but finished dead-last in passing defense and allowed the most explosive passing plays in SEC play. Stuffing teams in the running game doesn’t mean much if you aren’t going to stop them from throwing the ball on second and third and long situations.
That’s an adjustment the Aggies desperately needed to make heading into the upcoming season and the first result of the season was very positive in that regard. While you have to consider the level of competition, we’ll find out just how improved Texas A&M’s secondary truly is next week at Clemson, it’s a good start for the Aggies.
That’s something Fisher pointed out when asked to discuss Texas A&M’s four interceptions in the team’s 41-7 season-opening win against Texas State. Keep in mind, the Aggies defense only registered seven interceptions all of last season.
“That’s huge. You get confidence. Once you start making plays and you understand you can make them, then you start getting confidence that we did a good job and that,” Fisher said following the game. “The other thing on defense I meant to say, we can pick our pass rush up a little bit. We did at times. I think we can still put pressure on the quarterback a little better than what we did.
“But those guys in the secondary I thought were really, really covered well, batted balls. Even we had one blown coverage right there at the end of the half. They split a guy. We had two guys that got confused. Other than that, even the catches they made were pretty contested. Our guys were on the run making throws and playing pretty well.”
The Aggies secondary may be talented but the unit is filled with plenty of inexperience. In Fisher’s eyes, the only way to get those players up to speed is to put them on the field. Texas A&M managed to do that in the opener and should manage to do that once again against Lamar Week 4 before conference play begins in Week 4, against Auburn.
According to the Aggie coach, the plan is to keep getting those young defensive backs on the field as much as possible.
“You want guys you can play, and guys earned that time in camp,” Fisher continued. “I thought they earned that time in camp and played well enough to deserve some reps and go on to see game reps. And we kept some rotations and worked some combinations of young guys and older guys together. So you didn’t always have all the young guys together. Because in the secondary, a few communication parts of things.
“Getting that game out of the way was really huge, so now I think we feel comfortable with all the mix. We’re going to play as many guys as we possibly can everywhere. You have to develop players. You have got to have depth and keep a good rotation with these guys.”