Give @MattZemek a twitter follow and check out his musings on college sports at https://www.patreon.com/Zemek.
- Editor Note – Willie Taggart was fired late Sunday, and suddenly we have a retrospective…
QUESTION: Can Florida State fans find one positive in Willie Taggart’s tenure?
This question is powerful for the simple reason that it needs to be asked in the first place.
Go back two years, when Taggart was hired by Florida State. He left a good situation at Oregon with Justin Herbert — look at where the Ducks are now, preparing to play (likely) Utah for the Pac-12 title and a likely Rose Bowl berth — for his dream job.
Maybe you felt Taggart was overrated, which was reasonable based on his ho-hum first season at Oregon. Maybe you felt that winning big at South Florida and Western Kentucky wasn’t enough proof that Taggart would crush it at a blue-blood program. That was a reasonable view as well.
Yet, even the biggest Taggart skeptics probably didn’t think Florida State would be this bad after nearly two full seasons.
How bad is it? I could spend a lot of time documenting the misery of FSU football under Taggart, but I could simply say this instead:
After never missing a bowl from 1982 through 2017, Florida State is on the precipice of missing a bowl in consecutive seasons.
That’s it. That’s the tweet.
My goodness.
If Florida State doesn’t beat Boston College in its next game, it will have to beat Florida in The Swamp to make a bowl game.
What a train wreck.
For a brief period of time earlier this season, it seemed that the Seminoles were evolving. It seemed that the offensive line was getting better, that the team was displaying more physicality, that the Noles had developed some backbone and stamina in fourth quarters after a mysterious September in which they kept getting torched in second halves. The Louisville win was — and is — the highlight of the season. After that game, it seemed this team could become a decent group — nothing spectacular, but competent and certainly good enough to handle Miami’s awful offense.
WELP!
That brief period of improvement is a distant memory. FSU fans can still hope for a bowl bid and a win over Boston College. If they get that, then Willie Taggart will have his one positive moment.
If the Noles lose in Chestnut Hill, there will be nothing good for Taggart to point to.
Even the most skeptical Taggart observers probably didn’t think it would come to this in the Florida Panhandle.
Make sure you follow the All Sports Discussion Twitter account at @AllSportsDACC and please like our Facebook Page
Leave a Reply