MORE FARRELL: Twitter Tuesday | Three-Point Stance
It was the worst home loss in Florida State’s history. First-year coach Willie Taggart said some players “quit on our football team and that can’t be tolerated.”
Clemson beat the Seminoles, 59-10, on Saturday in front of many top-end recruits, including five-star athlete Quavaris Crouch, five-star offensive tackle Evan Neal, five-star running back Trey Sanders, five-star offensive guard Kardell Thomas and others.
It’s clear Florida State has lots of problems with perhaps the offensive line being the biggest issue of all.
Former five-star running back Cam Akers leads the team in rushing, but has only 467 yards and three touchdowns all season, averaging 58.4 yards per game. Akers’ rushing yards are good for No. 15 in the ACC – and he was supposed to be a program-changing superstar who drew lofty comparisons during his high school career.
Florida State also has former five-star running back Jacques Patrick in its stable. So far this season, he has 235 rushing yards and one score getting just 29.4 yards per outing.
Taggart is known as a fantastic recruiter and there are plenty of offensive line prospects in the Southeast serious about the Seminoles, including the visitors from this past weekend along with Tampa (Fla.) Plant’s Will Putnam and others. Commitments from four-star Dontae Lucas and three-star Charles Cross are already in on the offensive line.
RELATED: Florida State's 2019 commitment list
ASK FARRELL ...
We ask Rivals.com National Recruiting Director Mike Farrell to weigh in on whether Florida State’s offensive line recruiting could actually see a significant uptick since early playing time is a probability or will players be concerned about development at those positions based off what’s happening this season and look elsewhere.
“This is a tough question to answer because some offensive linemen could be turned off a bit by the lack of development at the position. However, overall this can be a recruiting advantage for them as most recruits feel they are college-ready and have such high confidence in their game that the early playing time would be very attractive.
"One thing we know for sure is that the offensive line recruiting at FSU has been simply awful and the coaching hasn’t been much better. The Seminoles can’t afford to make any more mistakes at the position and need to find guys who can impact early, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see them have some success after selling the early playing time. That’s the great thing about recruiting – if you’re winning you can sell that success and if you are losing you can sell early playing time.”
