Forde-Yard Dash: Jimbo Fisher’s Fingerprints Are All Over the 2025 College Football Season

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Second Quarter: Six Degrees of Jimbo Fisher

In a sign of how strange this sport can be, the fingerprints of one Jimbo Fisher (11) are all over the 2025 season after three weeks. Doesn’t matter that Fisher last coached in ’23; his past seems to be informing the present at various places across this great land. Let’s call roll.

Former Fisher quarterbacks are winning big in three places:

Haynes King (12) has led Georgia Tech to a 3–0 start that includes a road win over Colorado and the Saturday field-stormer against Clemson. In a previous life, the Longview, Texas, product played three years for Fisher at Texas A&M, losing the starting job late in the 2022 season to someone else who makes an appearance on this list.

In three seasons at Tech, King has been an ideal fit with head coach Brent Key’s offensive philosophy. Key has employed King in a Tim Tebow role—a power runner who can also throw as needed. He’s pounded out three straight 100-yard rushing performances in regular-season games: 110 last year in the multi-overtime Black Friday marathon against Georgia; 156 against the Buffaloes; and 103 against the Tigers.

While there are concerns about wear and tear on King (who missed the second game of the season against Gardner-Webb), Tech has a schedule that could allow for lightening his running load in the coming weeks. The Yellow Jackets’ next five opponents are currently winless against power-conference competition, and there is an open date on Oct. 4. It would not be a shock to see King leading an 8–0 team into November.

Conner Weigman (13) was the five-star recruit who beat out King at A&M in 2022, and remained the Aggies’ starter until a fractured foot ended his ’23 season after four games. Weigman kept the job to start last season under new coach Mike Elko, until the next QB on this list took it away from him.

Today, Weigman has led Houston to its first 3–0 start in nine years. He had a career-high 83 rushing yards on 17 carries Friday night against Colorado, repeatedly dodging pressure in the backfield and making plays. Weigman hasn’t had a turnover yet in three games as a Cougar.

In the fluid Big 12, it’s possible that Houston makes a push into the upper echelon this season. An Oct. 4 home game against Texas Tech could tell a lot.

Marcel Reed (14) was recruited to A&M by Fisher in 2023. He didn’t see the field as a freshman until Jimbo’s last game, a blowout of Mississippi State on Nov. 11, but became Elko’s guy early in ’24. Now Reed has led the Aggies to a 3–0 start, and had his finest hour Saturday at Notre Dame.

Reed passed for a career-high 360 yards against the Fighting Irish, repeatedly hitting big plays against a once-renowned defense. Reed had an 86-yard touchdown pass to burner Mario Craver, and a 45-yard bomb to KC Concepcion. (Elko did well in the transfer portal at receiver, adding those two from Mississippi State and NC State, respectively.)

Reed was at his best on the winning drive, running for nine yards on a third-and-8 and then making a great read and throw on the last TD pass. With his wideouts blanketed, Reed found backup tight end Nate Boerkircher in the end zone with one-on-one coverage from linebacker Drayk Bowen. Reed put the ball on his chest for the win.

Texas A&M quarterback Marcel Reed looks to make a throw. — Marcel Reed threw for a career-high 360 yards on Saturday against Notre Dame. | Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated

Those are not the only former Fisher QBs at Texas A&M who are still in FBS circulation. Zach Calzada, who started most of the 2021 season for the Aggies, was the starter at Kentucky until an injury sidelined him in Week 3. Max Johnson, who started part of the ’22 and ’23 seasons at A&M, is the backup at North Carolina. Jaylen Henderson is the backup at West Virginia.

Fisher could find quarterbacks. He just couldn’t settle on one to build his program around at A&M.

Then there is Fisher’s role as an ACC Network analyst. As such, the former national championship winner at Florida State can loom, buzzard-like, over a conference he once dominated. The 59-year-old has stated his desire to coach again, and now look—there is an ACC opening that might be of interest.

Virginia Tech (15) fired Brent Pry on Sunday, something it should have done last year. The Hokies are 0–3 and have collapsed completely—they were outscored in the second half of their second game, against Vanderbilt, and the first half of their third game, against Old Dominion, by a combined 62–0. That’s the sign of a team that had quit on its coach.

Fisher is an adept recruiter, and one of the most significant failings by Virginia Tech and Virginia (16) in recent years has been identifying in-state players. Look no further than Curt Cignetti’s recruiting at James Madison and—via transfer portal extension—Indiana. The Dukes/Hoosiers have been powered in no small part by Virginians at wide receiver (Elijah Sarratt), linebacker (Aiden Fisher), defensive end (Mikail Kamara) and running back (Kaelon Black, Justice Ellison). The ACC schools in the state didn’t show a lot of interest in most of those players.

If Virginia Tech wants to initiate a dialog with Fisher, there is no need to work through back channels because he’s at another school. That’s not to say he’s necessarily the best candidate, but he’s the most available candidate.

Meanwhile, two of Fisher’s primary rivals while at Florida State are on the struggle bus. Florida (17) is 1–2 and continues to lurch toward the end of the Billy Napier era, while Clemson (18) is 1–2 and continues to wander the post-dominance wilderness.

Napier has spent his college career coaching offense, yet his Gators have been pretty bad at it—and are getting worse. His first Florida team averaged 29.5 points and 6.58 yards per play; his second team averaged 28.4 points and 6.05 yards per play; his third team averaged 28.3 points and 6.26 yards per play; and this team checks in at 27 points and 5.48 yards per play.

Five-star quarterback DJ Lagway is young, but thus far his college career is mostly hype and little delivery. If you remove two stat-padding games against FCS competition, Lagway has thrown 11 touchdown passes and 15 interceptions—bottoming out with five picks Saturday in the loss to LSU. He is not a running threat. He’s led a total of two touchdown drives in the last two games, and one of those went 20 yards.

At Clemson, the offense is no better. The Tigers have scored three first-quarter points this season, and those came after a zero-yard drive. They’re averaging 3.4 yards per play in the first quarter. Whatever offensive coordinator Garrett Riley is scripting to start a game, it’s not working.

The alternative theory here is that LSU (19), which has beaten both Clemson and Florida, is a rising defensive juggernaut that can make any offense look bad. We’ll see whether that theory holds up. Fisher, by the way, was the offensive coordinator at LSU from 2000 to ’06 under Nick Saban and Les Miles.

If you want one more Jimbo tie to the news cycle, there’s this: He’s a West Virginia (20) native, and the Mountaineers just scored the first major victory of the Rich Rodriguez 2.0 experiment by winning a wild Backyard Brawl. Down 10 points to rival Pittsburgh in the latter half of the fourth quarter, West Virginia mounted two long drives to send the game into overtime and won it from there.

This was a welcome changing of the script for Rodriguez after his last Backyard Brawl, 18 years ago. That was the infamous 13–9 upset loss to a bad Pitt team that cost the Mountaineers a spot in the BCS championship game. Rodriguez left for Michigan shortly thereafter, altering the course of his own history and West Virginia’s. Beating Pitt this time helped cleanse the Sept. 6 Mountaineers’ loss to Ohio.