Column: FSU’s Disarray is Fisher’s to Fix, But Accountability Necessary

To call the 2017 season for Florida State a disaster at this point would be putting it mildly. The Seminoles have gone from preseason No. 3 to in serious danger of missing a bowl game for the first time since 1981.

The low point came Friday night as the Seminoles were manhandled in Chestnut Hill by Boston College, 35-3. With the loss, FSU fell to 2-5 — its worst 7-game start since the legendary Bobby Bowden’s first season on campus in 1976. The 32-point victory for Boston College also tied the largest margin of victory for the Eagles in conference since joining the ACC in 2005.

Think about that for a minute. While Boston College has hovered right around .500 overall for the last several years, there was a time when the Eagles were a real force in the ACC and played for conference championships. Boston College has had All-American caliber players like Matt Ryan, Mathias Kiwanuka, Mark Herzlich, B.J. Raji and Andre Williams. None of those players ever beat an ACC team by more than the current Eagles did FSU on Friday.

For the debacle that has been Florida State’s 2017 season, head coach Jimbo Fisher deserves the blame and must take accountability for what has been a disaster. Some have actually advocated FSU firing Fisher. That notion is absurd.

Lost in the catastrophe that is 2017 is all that Fisher has done for the FSU program. After taking over as head coach following three 7-6 finishes in four years, Fisher proceeded to win three straight ACC titles from 2012-14 with a national championship coming in the middle. Fisher has also led the Seminoles to a top 25 finish in each of his prior seven seasons and five straight major bowls games from 2012-16 with three victories. In four of the prior seven years, FSU finished with a top-10 national ranking.

With that being said, it’s also a fair (and fairly obvious) assessment to note that this is a program in decline. The Seminoles are a far cry from what they were during their national championship season of 2013 or their College Football Playoff appearance in 2014.

Over its last 27 games, FSU is just 16-11. That’s the same number of losses that Florida State suffered during Fisher’s first 75 games as head coach. Against ACC opponents, FSU is just 9-9 in its last 18 conference games.

There have been some misfortunes for Florida State this season that have been out of Fisher’s control. Injuries to starting quarterback Deondre Francois, starting running back Jacques Patrick and starting guard Landon Dickerson were huge blows, but the Seminoles are still loaded with blue-chip talent up and down the roster.

Throughout the disappointing season, Fisher has given mostly vague coach-speak concerning his team. He’s often said how the team was “inches away” and how the staff had to “coach ’em better”. He used the latter phrase following Friday’s embarrassment, which even in the vague sense that it’s used, is admitting that his staff is not getting the job done.

Fisher said the same sort of things while FSU was losing heartbreakers to N.C. State, Miami and Louisville by a combined 13 points. The fact that Friday’s contest at Boston College was the furthest FSU had come to winning any game this season shows that the staff is in fact not “coaching ’em better”.

While it begins and ends with Fisher, staff changes are necessary to get the program back among the ranks of the elite. An overhaul from top to bottom might not be necessary. The players bear some of the responsibility, but at the end of the day, it’s on the coaches to get the most out of them.

Few would argue that tight ends coach Tim Brewster and defensive tackles coach Odell Haggins are not getting results on the field and on the recruiting trail. The 2015 addition of defensive ends coach Brad Lawing has greatly improved the pass rush and running backs coach Jay Graham has done a decent job at that position, although his special teams units have left much to be desired.

For programs as renowned and accomplished as Florida State, it’s not uncommon for other programs to try to poach the staff by offering position coaches jobs as coordinators or coordinators head coaching jobs. Early on in Fisher’s tenure, that happened.

Defensive coordinator Mark Stoops was given the head coaching job at Kentucky following the 2012 season; former running backs coach Eddie Gran left to become offensive coordinator at Cincinnati; defensive ends coach D.J. Eliot left to take an defensive coordinator job at Kentucky. Linebackers coach Greg Hudson left to become Purdue’s defensive coordinator.

With the exception of Auburn pursuing defensive coordinator Charles Kelly following a productive 2015 season and South Florida showing a modicum of interest in wide receivers coach Lawrence Dawsey, there doesn’t seem to be anyone on the staff piquing any major program’s interest. That in itself, is a problem.

None of this is to personally demean either of these men or what they’ve done for the program.

Kelly did a good job as linebackers and special teams coach for the 2013 national championship team, but his tenure as defensive coordinator has seen that side of the ball drop off. In the three years prior to Kelly taking over the defense, FSU ranked in the top 5 nationally in total defense every year. Since then, the best that unit has done is 15th.

For the season currently, FSU ranks 31st in total defense and 50th in scoring defense. That side of the ball has had to replace a Consensus All-American in defensive end DeMarcus Walker and a good cornerback in Marquez White, but it returned nine starters and got perhaps the nation’s most versatile defender in safety Derwin James back from injury. It also brought in three of the nation’s top 50 overall high school prospects, according to the 247Sports Composite rankings, and two who enrolled early.

Last season, Kelly’s defense finished 22nd nationally in total defense, but was outside the top 100 until the middle parts of October. There is something admirable in being able to turn things around, but if the team — as FSU has been the last two seasons — is out of the ACC and national title race before the second week in October, some of the turnaround loses its luster.

Going back to last season, Kelly’s defense has also allowed four game-winning drives in the final two and a half minutes of contests. That number would have been five if not for a late touchdown pass from Deondre Francois to Nyqwan Murray in last season’s Orange Bowl against Michigan.

As for Dawsey, he has had his fair share of bad luck with a number of players being dismissed or transferring at the wideout position. FSU’s all-time leading receiver Rashad Greene and eventual first-round pick Kelvin Benjamin were products of Dawsey’s tutelage, but in Dawsey’s 11 seasons, those are the only two FSU receivers to go on to be drafted. Those are also the only two 1,000-yard receivers over that span.

Kelly and Dawsey aren’t the only two assistants for which replacement should be considered. Offensive line coach Rick Trickett, who produced the school’s only Rimington Trophy winner in Bryan Stork in 2013, has also watched his unit stagnate or take a step back in every season since.

After having three players drafted, it was to be expected in 2015. Since then however, it has seen no real improvement despite starting players like Alec Eberle and Derrick Kelly, who are both in their third year of having meaningful playing time. Others like Brock Ruble, who started six games in 2015, have failed to make progress to the point where they no longer start for the Seminoles as a redshirt junior.

Linebackers coach Bill Miller has failed to have a player drafted in what is now his fourth year with the program. While that is likely to change with Matthew Thomas and perhaps Jacob Pugh, there has also been a lack of progress seen at the position. Second-year players like Dontavious Jackson, Emmett Rice and Josh Brown have made only minor improvements.

While it is easy for fans, writers and other media figures to clamor for coaching changes, it’s not as easy for coaches to make them. Through film studies, team meetings and practices, coaching staff members spend more time with each other than virtually anyone else, including their families. Handing out pink slips is tougher than most think, but in this case, it’s something that Fisher must do.

A failure to do so would be conceding that the status quo at FSU is OK and that will sit well with no one. Fisher has never been shy in acknowledging that the standard at FSU is high and the onus is on him to get the talk around the program again focused on championships rather than sinking ships.

Mike Ferguson is the editor of The Daily Nole. Follow Mike on Twitter @MikeWFerguson