Willie Taggart pleads for patience after Florida State is taken by Syracuse



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Photo: Nick Lisi (AP)

The beginning of the Willie Taggart era in Tallahassee was quite ridiculous. The Florida State Seminoles entered this season in 20th place, but three weeks into the season. Jimbo Fisher's last season with the Seminoles was not very good and the early days of Taggart showed that the program was not up to the knee injury and coaching problems of the last year.

The main problem of the FSU is that they can not score points. They dropped their first game of the season 24-3 at home against Virginia Tech, in a really disastrous game where the Seminoles seemed perplexed by Taggart's actions and totally defeated by a team deemed about equal to the Seminoles before the start of the season. the season. The Seminoles had exactly one big game in this match, an 85-yard run led by Cam Akers that was quickly wasted on a rather avoidable fumble a few games later.

Until now, FSU's only win was against the FCS Samford School during the second week. The team needed a return to the fourth quarter to seal the result at 36-26, although the Bulldogs returned the ball five times.

On Saturday, the FSU went to Syracuse, where it was completely destroyed 30-7. If the first two games suggested that the worst was yet to come, this confirmed the hypothesis. This is the first time the FSU has lost to Syracuse since 1966, and the Seminoles failed to score until the final minutes of the match, when they were already down 23-0. Deondre Francois was fired four times and barely had time to defend against a defense that was not exactly a record breaking unit. The Orange lost their starting QB in the first half and substitute Tommy DeVito was still able to comfortably decide the Seminole defense.

Perhaps the easiest diagnosis to make here is that the offensive line of the FSU is terribly inefficient. The FSU line has been unstable for years, but the group has hit a new low this season. It's just serious:

Francis was rightly upset.

The FSU has always recruited at an elite level, although, as Tom Fornelli pointed out, they have not recruited or retained many offensive talents in the last five years. However, they also struggled because Taggart's offensive philosophy of "deadly simplicity" has been totally ineffective so far. Taggart has not yet found a way to use it for all the talents of the FSU.

The Seminoles will soon get to the heart of the program, with a tough part of ACC and a trip to Notre Dame. Taggart has a hell of a job ahead of him. At today's press conference, he asked for patience, which is reasonable given the magnitude of the FSU offensive line. Taggart has already toured western Kentucky and southern Florida, but unlike those schools, expectations at Florida State are much higher.

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