It's too early to bail on Taggart
From Fisher to OL, there’s plenty to blame for Seminoles’ woes.
TALLAHASSEE — Willie Taggart didn’t create this mess. Jimbo Fisher did.
The outline for the grotesque big picture for Florida State football that you saw during Saturday’s 30-7 loss to Syracuse was sketched by Fisher over the last two years.
Two years of little accountability on or off the field. Two years of allowing academics to become an afterthought. Two years of letting way too many things slide — from weight training to conditioning to anything and everything in between.
I don’t know exactly when or why Fisher took his hands off the wheel of this program and let it start careening toward a mountain, but he definitely did. And we all need to at least remember that before we blame Taggart and his coaching staff for all of the many problems plaguing this football team.
FSU is 4-8 in its last 12 games against Power 5 opponents. That ain’t all on Taggart.
The Seminoles have won 3 of
their last 10 ACC games. That ain’t all on Taggart.
And it’s not just the number of losses that tell the story, it’s the way this historically proud program has been embarrassed repeatedly in recent years. Long before there was 30-7 to Syracuse, there was 35-3 to Boston College. And 63-20 to Louisville. And 38-24 to Houston.
When you consider the entitlement and complacency that permeated this program over the last couple of years, we all were a little bit crazy, and a whole lot naive, to think Taggart could have turned it around overnight.
Yes, he brought some extra energy. Yes, he got the players going to class again. Yes, he did so many things right in the offseason — from giving the program a spark in recruiting to bringing legendary coaches Bobby Bowden and Mickey Andrews back into the fold to killing it on the spring booster tour — but we should’ve known it was going to take much more than that to change the prod- uct on the field.
The problem now, however, is that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to have confidence that Taggart is the guy who can clean up the mess Fisher left behind.
When the Seminoles looked sloppy and ill-pre- pared in the season opener against Virginia Tech, the optimists among us chalked it up to any number of excuses. Maybe the Hokies and defensive coordina- tor Bud Foster are just that good. Perhaps it’s going to take the players more time to get the hang of Taggart’s offense. Maybe the players were just trying too hard to please their coach and the fans. (That last excuse, of course, was a favorite of Fisher’s in recent years.)
Then when the Seminoles looked sloppy and ill-pre- pared against Samford, FSU’s coaches insisted they were encouraged by what they saw from the offense. They said they watched the film and there were any number of big plays that were there to be made.
But then Saturday happened. Another game of self-inflicted wounds, incredibly poor offensive line play, questionable play-calling, awful special teams and hor- rible clock management.
When it was over, Taggart laid much of the blame at the feet of the offensive line. And with good reason. There have been many poor performances by FSU’s OL during the past two years, but nothing quite like what we saw on Saturday.
But as bad as that group was, and has been, there is so much more blame to go around. And a lot of it must be shouldered by Taggart, who had at least two crucial coaching blunders when the game was still well within reach.
The frustration among the players was palpable throughout the second half Saturday. You had players venting on the sideline. You had teammates chas- tising each other after mistakes. You had quarterback Deondre Francois seemingly refusing to accept a helping hand from one of his offen- sive linemen after suffering another brutal hit. Even Taggart showed his frustration on a couple of occasions.
Meanwhile, nothing seems to be getting better from week to week. And Taggart doesn’t seem to offer anything in the way of quickfixes.
He said he didn’t even con- sider giving former Glades Central st a ndout James Blackman a chance at quar- terback because he would just get beat up like Francois. He did acknowledge that he would consider slowing the tempo on offense if that will help players stop committing silly penalties, but does anyone really believe that going fast has been the problem? This offense still hasn’t gotten out of second gear.
A nd when asked if he would consider delegating play-calling on game day to help his coaching staff tackle the team’s numerous other problem areas, Taggart dismissed the notion summarily. He said he’s going to keep doing what he does because he trusts himself as a playcaller and he knows where all the problem areas are.
Three games isn’t nearly enough time to prove that Willie Taggart isn’t the right man for this job.
But he needs to start giving people real reason to believe that he might be.