The Florida State football team needed a rally in the final minutes -- and a botched extra point in overtime -- to survive Saturday's scare from Louisiana-Monroe. The Seminoles walked away with a 45-44 victory, which gives them a 1-1 record heading into Saturday's contest at No. 25 Virginia.
In this edition of the Warchant 3-2-1, managing editor Ira Schoffel shares three observations, two questions and a prediction about the state of the Seminoles' program and concerns about the future.
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Three things we've learned
1 -- The more things change, the more they stay the same
It wasn't merely the fact that the Florida State football team needed Louisiana-Monroe to shank an extra point in overtime that was so disturbing about the Seminoles' 45-44 victory Saturday night at Doak Campbell Stadium.
It was how the Seminoles ended up in that situation.
Despite all the talk this offseason about how different the 2019 Seminoles would be from the 2018 Seminoles, this performance looked very much like the ones that left FSU with a 5-7 record in Willie Taggart's first campaign.
There were costly turnovers at the worst possible moments, ridiculous penalties, widespread defensive breakdowns, a lack of composure by several players and a slew of bad decisions.
The Seminoles were a pretty bad football team last year. They look like a pretty bad football team this year.
Someone asked me on a video chat we did late last week where this team has improved since Willie Taggart was hired nearly two years ago, and the biggest area I could point to was performance in the classroom.
Honestly, that was the best I could come up with.
And while academics are important, we all know that these universities aren't paying coaches like Taggart $5 million per year to get kids to go to class. It's part of the job, but it's not the top priority.
