FSU football: Impact of losing two offensive linemen this week
By Kelvin Hunt
FSU football can’t host practices or recruits on campus, but there is still a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes in Tallahassee.
FSU football coaches have been going hard on the recruiting trails and landed a nice commitment from four-star defensive back Hunter Washington on Tuesday.
Recruiting is all about evaluating and developing talent, but one thing most fans don’t think about is roster management.
That area has been one of the biggest weaknesses of past coaching staffs. Jimbo Fisher refused to remove players that were not developing or hurt too often to be productive.
That negligence added a lot of dead weight to the roster and didn’t allow the coaching staff to maximize those roster spots.
Florida State Seminoles Football
To be fair, Willie Taggart was handcuffed by a low APR score and wasn’t in a position to “trim the fat” off the roster so to speak.
However, after FSU posted its highest team GPA ever last week, Mike Norvell has shown he understands the importance of roster management.
He met with every player on the roster recently in what he calls exit interviews after the spring semester was over. Those conversations consisted of where each player fits in the grand scheme of things.
This week we saw two departures from the program, Mike Arnold and Christian Meadows, both offensive linemen who were never going to be productive going forward.
Arnold entered the transfer portal after awful play last year and some questionable effort at practice this spring.
Meadows was medically disqualified after shoulder issues never allowed him to play a snap since arriving in 2018. That means FSU will have two additional roster spots for recruiting moving forward.
They could take players from the transfer portal, JUCO players, or high school recruits to fill those to spots. That’s how the big boys handle players that can’t crack the depth chart or are often injured.
FSU Has 4 of the Top 75 Players In 2021 NFL Draft. dark. Next
That’s why teams like Alabama can sign the likes of 26, 29, 22, 27, and 25 the past five recruiting cycles. There could be a couple more players that opt to go elsewhere. If so, that simply means they didn’t fit going forward, and that’s another scholarship opening up for a new player.