FSU football: Pros and cons of offensive line recruiting strategies

JUCO

This is an area FSU hasn’t gone hard in yet as the new coaching staff was still being assembled through January.

Florida State Seminoles Football

It was too late in the cycle to make an impact there as those December graduates mostly knew where they were going by then.

If FSU targets a JUCO player that graduated in May, that means they’d have to get to Tallahassee and learn the offense ASAP if they plan to be a contributor in 2020.

A positive with JUCO players is they are physically more mature and have some college experience under their belt.

Often, the thought is they can come in and play more readily than high school players. A lot of the JUCO players are still raw in terms of development and technique. However, JUCO players can have more of an impact in that they often have 2-3 years of eligibility left.

At the very least, they have a better chance of being some sort of band-aid because they should be more physically developed than players coming out of high school.

There’s always the concern of taking players who didn’t qualify academically out of high school, though some JUCO players do qualify and just choose to go that route because they don’t have many offers.

The bust rate for JUCO offensive linemen is pretty high, and it’s a gamble to use a scholarship on a player that only has two or three years max to play while still needing a great deal of development to make a difference.