Best Indiana Football Players Of The 2020s So Far: No. 11 Aiden Fisher

One of the requirements used for inclusion in the Indiana football top 16 of the 2020s was where a player’s cumulative score landed inside the rankings.

If a player landed in the top 10, they could be ranked anywhere from 1-10 once subjective factors were taken into consideration, but no one inside the top 10 could drop out of that group.

Players ranked 11-20 were up for consideration for spots 11-16 with a handful left out.

Indiana linebacker Aiden Fisher, a first-team All-Big Ten and All-American linebacker, didn’t make the top 10. Rules are rules, so he finds himself at No. 11.

How did an All-American performer fall out of the top 10? One of the sources used to rate players evenly by position is Pro Football Focus.

For reasons only PFF’s graders know, Fisher just didn’t make an impression on them. That’s putting it mildly. PFF graders had Fisher ranked as the 23rd best defender … on Indiana’s team!

That ranking includes players with just a handful of snaps, but shave it down to just players with at least 100 snaps played and Fisher still ranked just 15th on the Indiana defense with an overall grade average of 67.3.

That is a shocking score. So much so, that Fisher was not in compliance with the rule that a football player had to have one season at 70 or more at PFF to be eligible for the top 16. Given that excluding Fisher would put a dent into the credibility in the exercise, and given some of the other one-year players who did make the cut, a rule was created to make sure Fisher made it into consideration for the top 16.

Any player who was first-team All-Big Ten or an All-American was required to make the cut.

Still, why on Earth was Fisher thought of so poorly by PFF? His run defense grade for the season was good at 80.9. Anything over 80 is considered to be good to excellent.

However, PFF really dinged Fisher for tackling (64.4), pass rush (65) and pass coverage (50.6). For weakside linebackers, that comprises three-quarters of the grade, hence the low overall average.

Fisher also had two games where PFF graders gave him a grade of 50 or lower (Washington, Ohio State), which is considered to be a bad performance.

PFF is well-respected, and they don’t give their grades without film analysis. But there’s obviously a disconnect between what they saw, what fans and media saw, and most importantly, what Curt Cignetti believes in from one of the most important players he brought with him from James Madison.

Fisher had a team-high 118 tackles, including 49 solo tackles. He had five games where he had 10 or more tackles, including a season-high 14 against Michigan’s run-oriented attack.

Fisher had eight tackles for loss, so he had the ability to create negative plays for the opposing offense.

Perhaps Fisher’s most telling trait that won’t show up in a box score or a grade is his leadership. Fisher quarterbacked one of the best defenses in the country and the best run defense in the country.

Fisher is back for the 2025 season and will once again anchor the Indiana defense. It will be interesting to see how PFF assesses Fisher this time around – not that Cignetti cares so long as Fisher continues to attack enemy ball carriers with abandon.

Previous football top 16 players of the 2020s

No. 12 - Jaylin Williams
No. 13 - Jailin Walker
No. 14 - CJ West.
No. 15 - Ty Fryfogle.
No. 16 - Mike Katic.