Three games into his coaching career at Florida State, head coach Willie Taggart is left looking for answers.
He began his Monday press conference after Saturday's loss to Syracuse with a prepared statement.
"Our fans have every right to have high expectations of our program and I can assure you that no one has higher expectations than I do," Taggart began.
"Our fans, students, alumni, former players, deserve a team that plays better than what we have so far this season."
The Syracuse loss was the next step in what has been an underwhelming start to the Taggart era in Tallahassee.
The Seminoles are off to a 1-2 start and needed to come from behind in the fourth quarter to beat FCS opponent Samford in their lone win.
Against FBS teams, FSU is averaging five points per game, worst among all 130 FBS programs.
FSU's lack of improvement through three games has cast FSU's streak of winning seasons – one short of the NCAA record at 41 – into severe doubt.
"We have a proud history and tradition of football at FSU and it is on our shoulders to carry on the torch," Taggart said.
"Our program has some tremendous young men that are determined to get it fixed and who are committed to turning this around and a group of coaches who are looking at everything including ourselves."
Taggart said during his statement that he has watched the Syracuse game back five times in the less than 48 hours since the game concluded at the time of his press conference.
His offense hasn't looked in sync yet this season, but the Seminoles' offense had its worst showing of the season against the Orange.
The Syracuse defense that allowed 9.7 yards per play against Western Michigan held FSU to 240 yards of offense on 60 plays (4.0 yards per play).
"We spent the last 48 hours as a team identifying areas to improve in, self-evaluating what we do, how we do it, working hard in practice with renewed purpose," Taggart said.
"I am confident that we will get it done, but all the words and coaching cliches in existence that we must do better won't help us play better. That comes in form of coaching.
"It's on me and our assistants to get this right and we will. I believe in this team and I believe that this team will get it done."
The blowback on social media from FSU fans has been immediate and quite fierce.
Several GoFundMe drives attempting to raise money towards Taggart's buyout were created Saturday night.
"I handle it by not being on (social media). That's pretty simple to me," Taggart said of the criticism.
"You understand when you don't play well, people are going to say negative things. That's part of it. If we don't want them to say negative things, we've got to play better."
Under Jimbo Fisher, members of the football team all agreed not to use social media from the beginning of fall camp through the end of the regular season.
Taggart allows his players to use social media during the season and some of the players have responded to fans negatively on social media who sent criticism their way.
Taggart has approached how he wants his team to deal with these issues going forward.
"With our players, it's the same way. We tell them the same thing. That's part of it, that's the world we live in now. Everybody has an opinion. You can't let everybody's opinion affect what you're doing," Taggart said.
"We play bad, they're going to say bad things and you can't get upset. We should be upset with ourselves. We want them to go say good things about us then we go play well and they will. Our guys understand that. They understand we've got to take care of our business if that's what we want.
"To me, they're upset because they know we can play better than we're doing and we're not playing the way we're supposed to. They have every right to be upset and we've got to change that. We can't ask them to change the way they think anything. We can earn their support and earn their respect by the way that we play."
In spite of all the adversity FSU is facing at this time, Taggart ended his press conference with the same positivity he started it with.
"I believe in this football team," Taggart said.
"I believe that they're going to get it right and we're all going to get it right."
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