As Corey Clark wrote in his piece on Wednesday , there were a number of factors that led to Jimbo Fisher’s immediate success as Florida State’s head football coach. Conversely, there were an array of issues that led to the Seminoles’ slide after the 2013 national championship season.

While Fisher and his staff deserved praise for their many recruiting successes during his eight seasons as head coach – FSU’s signing classes were perennially ranked in the top 10 nationally during Fisher’s tenure – it was a series of critical mistakes in quarterback recruiting that knocked the Seminoles’ offense off track in 2015 and beyond.

After helping Jameis Winston win the Heisman Trophy as a redshirt freshman in 2013 and already having turned Christian Ponder and EJ Manuel into first-round NFL Draft picks, Fisher should have had his pick of the top quarterback prospects in the country during the 2014, ’15 and ’16 recruiting classes. He should have been choosing from the best of the best.

But the only quarterback he signed in 2014 was J.J. Cosentino, a project who seldom threw the ball in high school while operating a run-heavy offensive attack. In 2015, he landed two quarterbacks – Deondre Francois and De’Andre Johnson – and Johnson ended up getting kicked out of school after punching a female student in a nightclub.

Then perhaps his worst decision of all was signing Malik Henry as his only signal-caller in 2016. While Henry was highly regarded because of his talent, there were a slew of red flags about his character from his time at various high schools in California and Florida. It would have been risky to sign someone with Henry’s track record under any circumstances, but especially so for FSU after seeing Johnson dismissed and knowing that Cosentino was not developing the way Fisher had hoped.

By the time the dust settled on those three recruiting classes, Francois was the only quarterback in the group who panned out. That’s how you end up with a fifth-year transfer (Everett Golson) stepping in as a starter one season, a redshirt freshman (Francois) taking over the next, and a true freshman (James Blackman) stepping in the next. For a coach who ran a pro-style system and stated repeatedly that his quarterback was the most important position on the team, Fisher was incredibly cavalier with his recruiting at the position. And it led to disastrous consequences.