The Daily Nole

Who is Willie Taggart? A Look at the Top Choice for Next FSU Head Coach

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The messy and disappointing departure of Jimbo Fisher has finally transpired. No one at the beginning of the year saw it coming, and the speed with which the story developed made it difficult to keep track of.

But it is now December 2017 and the Florida State Seminoles are looking for a new head coach. Over 40 years without a head coaching search have passed since Bobby Bowden was hired. Fisher’s exit is effectively the last remnant of Bowden to move on from the football program.

So now the attention turns to the market. One popular name that has arisen in recent days is Oregon head coach Willie Taggart. It seems a bit out of left field for Florida State, but Taggart checks off a lot of boxes for a good hire. Who is he and what are his results? We’ve compiled a bit of a profile below for all Seminole fans anxious to know.

Career Path

Taggart is originally from Bradenton, Florida. He was a star quarterback for the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers from 1994-98. After graduating, he stayed at the university and worked as an assistant from 1999-2006.

He worked as a wide receivers coach, quarterbacks coach, co-offensive coordinator, and finally assistant head coach. Taggart then went west to Stanford, where he worked as the running backs coach from 2007-09 under current Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh.

Western Kentucky brought him back as head coach from 2010-12. He then accepted the head coaching job at South Florida from 2013-16, before finally being hired by Oregon for the 2017 season.

Coaching Record

16-20 overall at Western Kentucky
24-25 overall at South Florida
7-5 overall at Oregon

Those numbers might scare Florida State fans unfamiliar with Taggart. It looks like a very mediocre hire. But context is key — before Taggart arrived at Western Kentucky, the Hilltoppers had gone 2-22 overall in the two seasons prior. He had a 2-10 record in his first year, but then had consecutive 7-5 seasons before being hired by USF.

South Florida was a similar situation. The Bulls had gone 8-16 before Taggart was hired. His first season in Tampa was yet another 2-10 finish. After that, it was constant improvement. He went 4-8 in 2014, 8-5 in 2015, and finally 10-2 in 2016, which was the first 10-win season in USF history. Although Taggart didn’t coach the bowl game, the Bulls capped their first top-25 finish with a 46-39 win over South Carolina in the Birmingham Bowl.

One season at Oregon is too little to go off of when determining how he did in Eugene. His starting quarterback was injured as well, so whatever happened in the northwest might not indicate what he’ll bring to Tallahassee, but despite that, the Ducks still improved by three wins.

So, what do some of the numbers say will happen?

Stats

For these statistics, we will be using S&P ratings since they are more telling than raw numbers. The recruiting rankings are from the 247Sports Composite rankings:

Off. RankingOvr. RankingRecr. Ranking
2010 WKU109111107
2011 WKU11010485
2012 WKU817497

Western Kentucky has inherent limits to the type of recruits it can get and how much talent is possible. The offensive and overall rankings are the more telling numbers, while the recruiting ranking is expected to hover around a certain area.

Off. RankingOvr. RankingRecr. Ranking
2013 USF12210354
2014 USF1119442
2015 USF515666
2016 USF85566

Something to keep in mind with his South Florida classes are how they stack up against fellow AAC conference opponents. The 2013, 2014, and 2015 USF recruiting classes were all No. 1 in the conference.

That trend breaks in 2016 when the Bulls finish fourth, but the work Taggart did shows up on the field this season. He turned the Bulls into perhaps the most talented Group of 5 team.

Taggart’s offense is grouped as “power coast”. There are more in-depth articles about power coast offenses, but the gist is that it combines power running schemes with more vertical passing concepts. Anyone who watched South Florida against FSU in 2015 and 2016 knows what it can look like when there is a good quarterback under center.

It leads to boom-or-bust passing plays and runs that take up chunks of yardage. He probably won’t fully implement it in his first year if he comes to Tallahassee, but the offense will certainly start looking different. Some players like running back Cam Akers and wide receiver Keith Gavin would presumably thrive while others such as quarterback James Blackman might struggle initially.

The larger takeaway is that Taggart has produced a top 10 offense without top 10 talent. From this perspective, his ceiling at Florida State will be very high.

Other Considerations

Recruiting in Tampa will improve astronomically. Taggart coached at USF and even poached a couple kids from there earlier this year while at Oregon. A couple of those players (Warren Thompson, Isaiah Bolden) are FSU targets that would almost assuredly flip to the Seminoles if Taggart is hired. Bolden in fact, was temporarily an FSU commit before flipping to Taggart and the Ducks in April.

The Daily Nole learned Friday that if Taggart were to leave Oregon for FSU, he would bring offensive line coach Mario Cristobal and defensive coordinator Jim Leavitt with him. Cristobal is an ace recruiter and decent line coach, though the former aspect would be the biggest change for FSU.

The days of Rick Trickett are over. Leavitt is good defensive coordinator who has a pattern of success. Both hires would be excellent for Florida State.

In many ways, the Bobby Bowden era at FSU has officially ended. Fisher was the last remnant of a Bowden dynasty desperately trying to keep itself relevant, although the longest tenured assistant in defensive tackles coach Odell Haggins could be retained.

Fisher turned out to be an excellent hire who returned FSU to its status as an elite program. Now there are very few people directly associated with Bowden left in the program. If they are, it’s because they’re higher up in the actual administration. The team itself enters a new stage of its history as it ventures into the unknown of a coaching search for the first time in four decades.

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