College football 2018: Top 30 breakout players to watch

The current trajectories of both Nick Starkel’s career and Texas A&M as a program might look much different than they do right now if Starkel hadn’t gone down with a broken ankle in the 2017 season opener against UCLA.

Since he did, Starkel comes in as a sophomore, trying to bounce back from missing half of last season, and he’ll be doing so under first-year head coach Jimbo Fisher.

Although the Aggies lost the final two games of the season with Starkel under center, it wasn’t due to lack of production in the passing game. Against LSU and Wake Forest, Starkel completed 58 of 93 passes (62.4 percent) for 726 yards, six touchdowns and four interceptions. He’ll look to pick up where he left off at the end of last season only when he does, he’ll be running Fisher’s new pro-style system rather than Sumlin’s version of the Air Raid.

Fisher’s offense is much more complex than what A&M quarterbacks got used to under Sumlin. It relies on its signal caller to have a thorough grasp of all moving parts and to be able to make the right pre-snap reads to put them and the ball in the right places. It’s a system that’s produced numerous all-conference and All-American performances though and if Starkel can stay healthy and quickly adapt, he could be the next in the line great quarterbacks to play under Fisher.

Whether or not he breaks out this season will likely be the biggest factor in determining the Aggies success and how Jimbo Fisher looks his first season coaching outside of Tallahassee.