Assistant coaches will be mentors
Taggart wants staff to be role models for players
TALLAHASSEE — New Florida State football coach Willie Taggart is not in a rush to hire assistant coaches.
But as Taggart continues to fill out his FSU coaching staff, there is one requirement of utmost importance: the ability to be a strong mentor for the Seminoles.
“I’m a big believer that when these young people turn about 22, 23 years old, they’re pretty much who they’re going to be the rest of their life. It’s so critical that we help them become the men that they want to be, and sometimes you don’t get that. They need that more than anything,” Taggart said on Thursday.
“You see so often that these kids become great football players. You take football away from them, and they’re in trouble or something bad happens. They haven’t learned anything else. It’s our job as coaches to make sure that with that.”
The first two weeks of Taggart’s coaching tenure at Florida State have been filled with “recruiting, recruiting, recruiting,” as he likes to say.
While trying to salvage FSU’s 2018 recruiting class, which dropped from eighth to outside of the Top 50 nationally after former coach Jimbo Fisher’s departure, Taggart has also added three assistant coaches with hopes of completing his new FSU coaching staff by Jan. 1.
So far, Taggart has hired three assistants he has already worked with at previous stops during his coaching career.
Telly Lockette, who coached running backs at Oregon State this season, will be FSU’s new tight ends coach. Lockette we help them