Owls start first spring camp under Taggart

The moment FAU coach Willie Taggart had waited on for over a year finally came, with the Owls kicking off their spring practices with Taggart at the helm of the program this week.

Florida Atlantic went 5-4, including three consecutive losses to end the year, during its first season under Taggart in 2020.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Owls had their entire spring schedule canceled and only had a month-and-a-half of preseason practices last summer to prepare for a pandemic-impacted season — which helped give Taggart a greater appreciation for spring camp.

“I’ve been looking forward to this because now I understand our football team a lot better,” Taggart

said during a web conference call Tuesday afternoon. “Going into spring ball now, things are a little clearer. It allows us to put guys in better positions. For me and what we went through last year, it gives us an opportunity to really work on fundamentals and techniques of doing things.”

The team that joined Taggart and his revamped coaching staff, including two new lead coordinators, for practice this week in Boca Raton largely resembled the one that the Owls ended the 2020 season with.

Over 82 percent of the players who ended last year on FAU’s roster are listed on the team’s spring roster, including 30 of the 34 players who started a game for the Owls in 2020.

All three quarterbacks from last year — Javion Posey, Willie Taggart Jr. and Nick Tronti — are on the spring roster, in addition to Michael Johnson Jr., who transferred to FAU from Penn State.

Only six of the 20 seniors, redshirt seniors or graduate students who ended last season on the team departed from the program, with the NCAA giving all fall student-athletes an extra year of eligibility.

“It’s helped tremendously because you have all these guys back that understand what you’re trying to do,” Taggart said. “You’re not spending as much time instructing them with doing certain things. It’s going to really help us create the culture I want to create here, which is a highly competitive culture.

“We have some competitive depth, which is something we didn’t have. And when you have the competitive depth, it helps your football team get better.”

Taggart added that having so many veteran players on the roster will help make for a smoother transition as the Owls welcome Michael Johnson and Mike Stoops as their new offensive and defensive coordinators, respectively.

“The good thing about our guys is they’ve been in a couple of different systems,” he said. “The one thing they realize is a lot of these systems are pretty much similar, they just call it something different.

“Our guys really understand the different terminology, but they’re doing some of the same things they’ve done before.”

And with a full schedule of spring practices ahead of him, Taggart feels the Owls can focus on sharpening the fundamentals they lacked last year.

“I thought one of the areas we were really bad at last year was fundamentally and technically as a football team,” he said. “I attribute some of that to not having spring ball. We have the players to get the job done, we just got to keep developing them.”

Player availability

Taggart said offensive lineman Federico Maranges, wide receiver John Mitchell and defensive tackle Marcel Southall were among the players who wouldn’t be available for spring practices due to injuries.

Mitchell missed the 2020 season due to a knee injury, which he is rehabbing from. Maranges is rehabbing from a labrum injury while Southall had knee surgery during the offseason.

Taggart said running back Larry McCammon has been training with the team after missing most of last season with an ankle injury.

“He’s been looking really good at practice,” Taggart said. “We’re going to be smart with him. When he’s running around, he’s ready to roll.”

A notable absence from FAU’s spring roster is linebacker Keke Leroy. Leroy wasn’t on the team during the 2020 season after being named second-team All-Conference-USA in 2019.

“We anticipate Keke coming back,” Taggart said. “He’s got to finish doing some things to get back with the football team that he’s working on now. We expect him to finish those things and be back ready to roll. And hopefully, back in the old Keke form.”