FSU football head coach Willie Taggart as dealt a bad hand when he arrived in Tallahassee, but understands how to fix the problem.
FSU head coach Willie Taggart recently gave some insight into his first year in Tallahassee. He spoke with Bleacher Report on a variety of topics from culture, APR scores and how the job was similar and different to his previous jobs.
There wasn’t a ton of new information except a former FSU assistant spoke anonymously about players not going to class and being enabled by the former staff. You’ve likely read it by now but if you haven’t it’s worth doing so.
Willie Taggart then went on Ralph Russo’s AP Podcast (definitely give it a listen if you haven’t) and spoke about how different things have been since the season ended last November. How players are buying into things more now, but also spoke on why certain things didn’t happen sooner.
The one thing that caught my ear was the following quote regarding FSU’s APR scores compared to Oregon and previous coaching stops:
"The problem is from a APR standpoint it wasn’t that bad at those other places. So that part was completely different here. There were probably some guys that probably needed to move on and you couldn’t…ya know..and that part of it made it a little more difficult and you got to deal with some guys because you’re trying to keep APR up. So that part of it is what made Florida State different than all the rest of them."
Thoughts
There was a huge problem with Jimbo Fisher in that he allowed too many players to not develop or not contribute anything to stay far too long. He didn’t “trim the fat” off the roster so to speak.
We’ve documented there were 53 percent of the blue chip players Fisher signed from 2015-17 who have not contributed anything or are no longer on the roster.
That’s not counting any three-stars that could fit that bill.
Now, if you’re recruiting the right players a coach shouldn’t have to do that quite as much which is another tell on the latter part of Fisher’s tenure. However, hearing Taggart talk about needing to get rid of players that are a detriment to the team and its culture says quite a bit.
The fact he’s willing to do that and recognizes it as a reality in today’s college landscape gives me confidence going forward he’ll right the ship with FSU football.