Oregon Football: 5 coaches who could replace Willie Taggart

Oregon football could soon be looking for a head football coach, again. Here are my five coaches who could replace Willie Taggart.

Willie Taggart might not last twelve months in the damp cold that is Eugene. Taggart, a Florida-native, is rumored to be retreating to the Florida state capital known as Tallahassee to become the head football coach of the Florida State Seminoles.

Florida State finished 2017 with a 6-6 record and ranked 51st overall in Bill C’s S&P+ rankings. The ‘Noles started the year as a preseason top-five team before taking a beatdown from Alabama and losing their starting quarterback, Deondre Francois, to an injury in the fourth quarter of that game.

Jimbo Fisher hit reboot on his career and took $75 million to coach at Texas A&M for the next 10 years. This left an opening, and Taggart might jump at the chance to return to a much warmer Northern Florida.

Taggart could leave the Ducks after going 7-5, an improvement for Oregon after finishing the 2016 season 4-8 and firing Mark Helfrich. He immediately bolstered Oregon’s recruiting, all the way to currently sitting at fifth overall in most rankings. Oregon already has Justin Herbert at quarterback but also signed Braxton Burmeister for 2017 and now Tyler Shough, a young man out of Arizona.

The Ducks have firepower on campus and whoever Phil Knight chooses to replace Taggart will need to repair the recruiting class in a hurry with early signing before the Christmas break and then the usual signing period still in early February.

Here are my top five coaches to replace Taggart at Oregon.