FSU football: Thoughts on ‘Noles recruiting at present moment

FSU football is still working to finalize who they think will be the next head coach in Tallahassee. What’s going on with recruiting?

FSU football amazingly still has the No. 18 ranked recruiting class in the nation after firing Willie Taggart in early November and losses to Miami and Florida.

The Noles still do not have a head coach announced yet so I wondered what was happening on the recruiting front since recruiting coordinator David Kelly was let go shortly after Willie Taggart.

It appears some of the current coaches are out on the road recruiting despite not knowing their immediate futures with the program.

There’s a good chance a number of them will not be retained when the new hire is announced as they’ll likely bring in their own coaches.

That’s 2020 three-star offensive tackle Casey Collier who’s from Texas and current USC commit.

That’s 2020 three-star QB Austin Renfro who was recently offered by Kendal Briles.

That’s four-star wide receiver and FSU commit Ja’Khi Douglas who hails form Louisiana.

That’s four-star 2021 linebacker Zavier Carter.

That’s three-star 2021 cornerback Phillip O’Brien Jr. with wide receivers coach Ron Dugans.

Thoughts

I can understand the coaches going out and meeting with current 2020 FSU football commits, but it’s interesting to see new offers going out for 2020 and 2021 players.

It’s almost like there has to be some inkling of the coaches knowing who could be retained or not as some coaches don’t seem as active as on the recruiting trail.

Then again, we saw coaches from Jimbo Fisher’s staff continue to recruit this way even though they knew there was a good chance they wouldn’t be retained when Willie Taggart became head coach in December 2017.

The biggest thing is the early signing period coming up for current commits/targets. It’s going to be huge for FSU to get the players planning to sign early to sign or targets that planned to sign early elsewhere to delay signing with other schools.

Whoever the new coach is will be up against the clock big time and will need to do work to salvage this class. The good news is FSU recruiting has not fell off a cliff after the Taggart firing the same way it did when Fisher left.

The next couple of weeks will be impactful and will be interesting to see how the new coaching hire handles recruiting against the clock.