FSU Football: Was Kendal Briles a failure during season with Seminoles?

FSU football will have their fourth different person in the coordinator position come the 2020 season – but was last season as much of a failure as we think?

With any new head coach comes change – and FSU football will be no different with the move to Mike Norvell as the new leader of the team for the start of the 2020 campaign. Already in just the first few days, news has comes out that longtime assistant Odell Haggins is sticking around in a move that Seminoles fans love.

Within a day of Norvell being hired came the news that the Seminoles were going to hire Kenny Dillingham – who had previously been with Norvell at Memphis and had spent the 2019 season as the offensive coordinator for the Auburn Tigers – to lead the Noles on that side of the ball next season.

With that move, it means FSU football will be on their fourth offensive coordinator in as many seasons – and more importantly, it means that the Kendal Briles era in Tallahassee comes to an end after just 13 games. Well, hey…at least he got to finish the season, right?

Florida State Seminoles Football

Briles was brought in last December after the move of Walt Bell to be the head coach at UMass – where he did a real star studded job in leading the Minutemen to a 1-11 season in 2019. With the performance that Briles had done at places like Florida Atlantic and Houston, big things were expected in Tallahassee.

Over the first 12 games of this current season, the Seminoles averaged just over 269 yards passing and nearly 134 yards on the ground – numbers good enough to be ranked 33rd and tied for 101st receptively in the FBS.

In the season before under the…umm, “leadership” of Bell, the Noles went for just over 270 yards a game passing – which was good to be ranked 28th nationally – while being God awful running the ball at just 91 yards a game, which ranked 127th in the FBS during the 2018 season.

Briles was tasked with taking on an offense that was still adjusting to being more fast paced under former head coach Willie Taggart after the more pro style offense that had been run for most of the eight seasons of FSU football’s previous coach before that – someone who wasn’t the “offensive coordinator” but called all the plays and ran that side of the ball.

Like what took place with Taggart, Briles is going to get criticized for the fact that he came into Tallahassee with all the flash that was supposed to improve the Seminoles on offense – and the team is limping into the postseason with just one more win than the season before as they prepare for the Sun Bowl and a date with Arizona State.

Was Kendal Briles’ time in Tallahassee – which, for the record, has not officially come to an end at this moment – a failure? Not at all. Was it a disappointment based on the hype that came with his arrival? That might be a better way to put it.