Florida State Football: “DBU” is no longer alive in Tallahassee
By Dana Becker
For the better part of the last 20-or-so years, Florida State football has produced some of the top defensive backs in the nation.
The self-proclaimed “DBU,” though, was put through the grinder Saturday night against, of all people, Samford.
And while the upset bid of the Bulldogs came up just short, 36-26, they definitely left a glaring hole on the last line of defense for Florida State and first-year head coach Willie Taggart with his $5 million per year salary.
Over the years, the Seminoles have relied on an excellent secondary to claim a handful of Atlantic Coast Conference titles and even a few national championships. Along the way, stars like LeRoy Butler, Terrell Buckley, Samari Role, Derwin James, Antonio Cromartie, Xavier Rhodes, Jalen Ramsey and, if we want to go back even further, Deion Sanders, have wore the FSU uniform.
In fact, since the 1989 season, a total of 32 former Florida State defensive backs have been drafted with eight of them securing first round status.
All those former ‘Noles, though, were left hiding any Florida State gear they might have had on or laying around after this latest performance.
The real crazy thing is that in the season opener last week, a 24-3 white-washing by Virginia Tech, the Seminoles only allowed 207 yards passing. Josh Jackson, who isn’t a horrible ACC quarterbacks, completed 16 of 26 for 207 yards with two touchdowns.
But for Samford and Devlin Hodges, that was more-or-less just a half of work Saturday night. Hodges ended his night 39-for-60 passing with 475 yards and a pair of scores.
This might just be an overnight thing for the Seminoles, as they did rank 29th last year allowing just 195.5 passing yards per game. That placed them right-smack between Florida and Ohio State, and ahead of the likes of Michigan State, Penn State, Notre Dame and Miami.
Just one member of that secondary from a year ago was drafted in Marquez White, as he was picked in the sixth round by the Dallas Cowboys.
Defensive coordinator Harlon Barnett made no changes to his depth chart ahead of the Samford game, rolling with Levonta Taylor, Kyle Meyers, Stanford Samuels III, A.J. Westbrook and Asante Samuel, Jr. among others.
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Levonta Taylor did record a game-sealing pick-six late in the fourth, Meyers had a pair of interceptions and Westbook picked off another pass, but this wasn’t Clemson with Kelly Bryant and Trevor Lawrence, or NC State with Ryan Finley, or even Wake Forest with Sam Hartman.
This was Samford. And if this is the kind of week-by-week production the Seminoles are going to receive out of their secondary, it’s going to be a very, very, very long season for the garnet and gold.