FSU football: Grading 2018 recruiting class in retrospect

FSU football had a transition class in the 2018 recruiting cycle.

Recruiting stars matters with FSU football or any college football program. Don’t get it twisted and think you can compete for national championships with a team full of three-star recruits.

Yes, it’s possible to win games with well-coached three-star players, but you must have those difference-makers to compete at the highest level.

Once Jimbo Fisher left FSU for Texas A&M, we knew the 2018 class would be a transition class with whoever the FSU administration hired at the time.

The class fell-off once Fisher left, with players fearing instability and the unknown. Once Willie Taggart was hired, he was tasked with rescuing a class that had dropped to FSU ranked in the 60s.

He went to work, almost single-handedly, while trying to hire a coaching staff and managed to finish with the No. 11 class in the nation. It was a mixture of players Jimbo Fisher recruited and players Taggart recruited while at Oregon.

It was a blue-chip heavy class with 13 four-star players, and seven players ranked in the top 200. There were three players ranked in the top 100.

The class consisted of 13 blue-chip players of 21, which equates to a 62 percent blue-chip ratio.

The only problem is a lot of this recruiting class hasn’t or didn’t contribute much. That’s expected with most transition classes, but lots of these players never played at all or just left the program.

Let’s take a look at this class by category.