Florida State football has a new coach in Willie Taggart and he’s opened the quarterback battle to three candidates. Which of them wins the starting job?
In one moment, Florida State’s 2017 team went from dark horse national contenders to hanging on by a thread. The Noles were soundly beaten in their opening game by the eventual national champions, Alabama, and worse yet, lost their starting quarterback Deondre Francois to an injury in the fourth quarter. He’d soon be ruled out for the entire season.
FSU was already thin at quarterback, so in stepped largely unheralded true freshman James Blackman. And all things considered, Blackman did pretty well! In a messy season in Tallahassee, the young quarterback completed 58.2 percent of his passes for 2,230 yards and 19 touchdowns. It could’ve been much, much worse, and the Noles escaped total disaster by sneaking into a bowl game for the 36th-straight season.
Now Francois is back, though he’s not at full strength yet. Blackman’s got a full offseason in a college strength and conditioning program under his belt. And that’s not to mention a few other promising options who will be battling into the fall.
It’ll all be decided when August rolls around, but here’s our prediction for how the depth chart will ultimately play out.
Bailey Hockman is the forgotten man in the quarterback battle, but he’s got a pretty great resume for a presumed third-stringer. He was the more highly-touted quarterback prospect in Jimbo Fisher’s 2017 class, but was banged up in the offseason and fell behind Blackman in the backup race. Understandably, a redshirt season ensued.
Now he’s got another shot. Hockman was a four-star prospect and ranked as the 280th-best prospect in the nation, per the 247 Sports Composite. By all indications, new coach Willie Taggart will include Hockman in the quarterback battle this fall, but logic dictates that Blackman and Francois have a decent lead on the redshirt freshman.
Still, there’s plenty to like about Hockman. He performed admirably in the spring game, throwing for 203 yards and a touchdown and leading his team to the win. He’ll have a blank slate with Taggart coming in and instituting a new offensive playbook.
All that said, he’ll have to show something that he hasn’t shown to this point to make up ground on Blackman and Francois.
For some, deciding between Blackman and Francois is as simple as looking at the numbers that the two signal-callers put up during their respective seasons as the starter. Francois, of course, leads in most every category.
That’s a misleading way to go about looking at the situation. The two quarterbacks were thrown into drastically different scenarios, and Blackman’s numbers have to be taken with a massive grain of salt. And, of course, the true sophomore actually performed pretty well!
There’s a lot working in his favor. With Francois still sidelined in the spring, Blackman’s gotten significantly more full-contact reps under Taggart, and that sort of familiarity is invaluable. He’s bulked up during the offseason and has a much more ACC-ready frame.
What, then, gives Francois the advantage in a race that appears to be a total dead heat? It’s simpler than it seems – Taggart’s Gulf Coast Offense relies quite a bit on the threat of the quarterback running, and Blackman is rather statuesque in the pocket (he finished 2017 with negative 39 yards rushing).
Blackman could start the season under center if Francois is still recovering, but he’s not the best fit for the offense that the Noles want to run. That may hold him back in the long run.
Francois certainly has areas in which he can improve. His gaudy 2016 numbers (3,350 yards passing and 25 total touchdowns to seven interceptions) hide a few of his flaws, namely his penchant for holding on to the ball too long and his lack of production against top-tier teams. Against three of the Noles’ top 25 foes in 2016 – Clemson, Michigan, and Louisville – Francois never eclipsed a 50 percent completion rate. That won’t cut it this season.
But it’s easy to forget that Francois, like Blackman, only has one season’s worth of experience as a Division I starter. He’s far from a finished product, and with three years of eligibility remaining (presumably, with a medical redshirt), his future is every bit as bright as his younger counterpart. He’ll also benefit from being able to use his legs more in Taggart’s spread option offense than he did in Jimbo Fisher’s pro-style scheme.
There are still questions, namely whether or not his lengthy injury layoff will affect his play or his rapport with the offense. Some have even questioned his leadership after the injured signal-caller failed to show up to Senior Day late last season. That’s not to mention an incident in April when Francois was revealed to be under police surveillance on suspicion of selling marijuana.
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Taggart seems to be pleased with his quarterback’s rehabilitation, though, and that’s a good sign. A healthy Francois should be the frontrunner for the starting job. How quickly he recovers will determine whether he’s taking snaps during week one, or later down the line.