FSU Football: Was Demarcus Christmas a disappointment in 2018?

FSU football has plenty of blame to go around for what took place last season, but was one of the returning stars a big reason for the struggles?

When your team has the first losing season in over four decades, the initial reaction is to go around blaming everyone for everything that took place – and that has been what has gone on with the FSU football team since going 5-7 this past year and watching other teams play in a  bowl game for the first time since 1981.

From head coach Willie Taggart to the offensive line and quarterback Deondre Francois, there is plenty of blame to go around and there will be for the time to come – but there may be one person who, like the Seminoles as a whole last season, got a lot of build up and didn’t live up to the promise last season.

When defensive tackle Demarcus Christmas announced that he was returning to the FSU football team for his redshirt senior season, it was seen as a much needed jolt to a team that had gone 7-6 the year before.

By the end of the 2018 season, Christmas had finished the season with just 31 total tackles, no sacks and no forced fumbles in the 10 games that he played in. In three of those games for the Seminoles, he had just one tackle each and wasn’t a factor at all – at the same times, named like Frederick Jones and others came in and did their job in his place.

Now, of course I am not saying that Christmas is the reason the Seminoles had a losing season and the numbers show the run defense was one of the few good things about the Noles this past season – but if anything else, this was another lesson from the 2018 season.

Too much build up can be a bad thing. The Seminoles honestly could have gotten less criticism for having a losing season had there not been that much build up for both Taggart and what was supposed to happen entering the year – and building up returning players like Christmas fall into that same category.

Hopefully, Christmas will follow in the path of former FSU football defensive tackle Derrick Nnadi – return to school and get to the pro game the year after. If that does indeed to be the case, his numbers in Tallahassee will be forgotten rather quickly and he’ll be just another pro Nole.