ATLANTA -- Willie Taggart has been asked about it repeatedly during his spring booster tour. And, at least through the first few stops, he isn't the least bit bothered.
Florida State's second-year head coach understands the curiosity following his comment last week that the Seminoles are no longer using a traditional playbook. He said he had the same reservations when new offensive coordinator Kendal Briles explained the approach to him.
It didn't take long this spring, however, for Taggart to become a believer.
As he pointed out on Wednesday night during his booster stop at Top Golf in Atlanta, not having a playbook doesn't mean the Seminoles have watered anything down. It doesn't mean there is a limited number of options.
It's just a different way of teaching.
"When you watch him teach it, there's a rhyme and reason for not having one," Taggart said. "It's been good for us, just to see our guys pick up on it so quickly in spring ball. Because we didn't have a lot of time with them to just go over football -- we were recruiting and we had our morning workouts. So, again, I was more impressed with that than anything.
"Our guys picked up on it quick. It's a different way of teaching. There are a lot more walk-throughs than just (looking) on the board. And it's getting the players involved, too. When we're in meetings, they let us know what they're supposed to do."
The offense is not drastically different from what FSU's players learned a season ago. The hope, of course, is that it's just executed a lot better.
Briles has produced record-breaking offenses wherever he's been, and this is how he learned the system from his father, former Baylor coach Art Briles. While the "no playbook" concept is new to fans of the garnet and gold, it is precisely the same way the offense was taught when Baylor had its offense humming as one of the best in the country.
“I think I memorized over 300 plays at Baylor," former All-America wide receiver Kendall Wright said when he was drafted by the Tennessee Titans in 2012. "We had a lot of plays. We just didn’t have a playbook. Coach Briles is a very smart man. It was the same system. We were in that system for four years. It’s kind of a different kind of learning deal. We’d see it visually, and we’d just go run it. It just sticks with us when we keep running it a lot.
“We’d watch film and go over a lot of it in our meetings that we had. We’d have a lot of plays on the board, and have different signals. Whatever the signal was would tell us the play.”
