FSU Football: Why assistant coach situation may be a blessing for Noles

FSU football is dealing with the situation that won’t allow David Kelly to move to an off field job, but it may not be the worst thing in the world.

As the FSU football team went back onto the field for the first time in the spring earlier this week, they did so with new faces in uniform as well as several new ones on the coaching staff – but while some of the attention was pointed toward wide receivers coach Ron Dugans and offensive line coach Randy Clements, it was a face that was still there that surprised some.

The hiring of Dugans was thought to allow the wide receivers coach from last season, David Kelly, to move back to an off field, administrative position that he had under head coach Willie Taggart while the two were at Oregon and USF as Kelly had not been a field coach since the 2013 season.

However, thanks to our good friends at the NCAA – which have always been fair and balanced with FSU football when it comes to decisions (sarcasm noted) – Kelly will have to wait until the end of this season before he can make a move after the governing body turned down the Noles’ request according to the Tallahassee Democrat and other outlets.

On paper, it would seem that the issue is now an unbalanced amount of coaches when it comes to each side of the ball – but the move to make Kelly the sole recruiting coordinator with no actual on field responsibility is something that might be the best thing for FSU football.

After a recruiting class that “only” finished in the top 20 last season, Kelly can spend 100 percent of his time working on getting that number up and helping to make sure that the other FSU football assistant coaches are maximizing their time off the field with recruits since Kelly will be doing more of the work.

Second, it means that Kelly will not be splitting anything when it comes to the wide receivers room with Dugans and will allow the former Seminoles star to implement his coaching philosophy to go along with the game plan of new offensive coordinator Kendal Briles.

It also indirectly led to the move that made Mark Snyder become the single special teams coach while he will assist with linebackers and Odell Haggins moves to coaching the entire defensive line as a result – allowing one coach to focus on the God awful special teams from last year and giving arguably the best assistant in Haggins more responsibility.

In 2020, FSU football will get the exact staff they wanted this season – but for now, the way things are may not look normal but they might actually just work.