Willie Taggart: Deondre Francois showed improvement against Samford

Willie Taggart addressed the media Monday morning and spoke about the role of Deondre Francois in FSU’s win over Samford.

We’ve talked about the FSU’s win over Samford to death it seems and it would have been the most embarrassing loss in the history of FSU football without him Saturday.

The Noles were 33 point betting favorites against FCS level Samford, and were losing in the fourth quarter 26-21 with under six minutes to go.

Deondre Francois engineered a 11 play 82 yard drive that consisted of seven pass plays for 55 of those yards.

He also completed a crucial two-point conversion pass that forced Samford to score a touchdown for the win instead of a field goal.

Francois completed 67 percent of his passes that included a sure-fire 54 touchdown that George Campbell dropped and Keith Gavin had at least one drop as well.

Willie Taggart spoke about Deondre Francois Monday and the improvement he showed from game one to game two.

"You think about it with Deondre. He didn’t have a spring to do it and in training camp, he’s sharing reps with other guys. He had the reps that all the other guys has with it. And I thought he was so much better from game one to game two when it comes to his reads. I personally thought Deondre was locked in that game and to everything that we had to do.Did he miss some reads? He did. But he was so much better with it this game than he was the first game. So I seen a big improvement when it comes to him reading those zone reads and he’s getting more comfortable and seeing it better. And I think with the reps it’s making him comfortable with that. But, yeah, he did miss some. He missed a lot of them in the first game and in the second game he missed a couple here and there. But I thought overall he played a hell of a game for us and he was focused on what was going on and saw the field really well."

Thoughts

We have to recognize this was a FCS level opponent, but this isn’t coach speak from Willie Taggart.

It’s why I wrote FSU football will need to lean on the passing game more to find success on Monday.

Francois was hard on himself and took the blame for most of the mistakes the offense made in his post-game interview.

This offense is going to go as he goes behind this banged up and inexperienced offensive line. If he makes the correct reads it seem to open up the offensive provided everyone else executes their assignments.

In fact, his correct decision to keep the ball on a zone read is what allowed him to score a rushing touchdown relatively untouched Saturday night.

FSU’s next opponent Syracuse has a dreadful defense that allowed 6.59 ypp on average its first two games against Wagner and Western Michigan.

Saturday could be a coming out show for the offense, but it’ll all go how Deondre Francois goes coupled with his receivers not having the dropsies.