In Saturday's postgame press conference, Florida State head coach Willie Taggart was clearly frustrated with the play of his starting quarterback in the second half of the 28-27 loss to Miami.

Not only did he say Deondre Francois has to get better at "hitching up" in the pocket -- instead of just standing at the top of his drop -- but he repeatedly lamented the two game-changing turnovers.

That was the case again on Monday morning as Taggart met with the press before the Seminoles' practice.

Every answer essentially came back to that point: If his offense hadn't turned the ball over deep in its own territory twice - on back-to-back possessions in the third quarter - then the Seminoles leave Hard Rock Stadium with a win.

Instead they suffered a one-point defeat that Taggart admitted would sting for a while.

With that in mind, the Florida State head coach was asked on Monday if Francois was still entrenched as the starter for the Seminoles.

"Is that a question?" he asked with a smile. "You've got to be kidding me."

So there's that.

Francois isn't in danger of losing his job to James Blackman.

But Florida State is 117th in the nation in turnover margin. Taggart knows that absolutely has to change if the Seminoles are going to turn the season around and build off the way they played for much of the game at Miami.

At the halfway point of the season, Florida State is 3-3. With the tougher half of the schedule approaching. On Monday, Taggart was asked if this is where he thought his squad would be at the halfway point of 2018.

He said he thought they'd have a better record, but also acknowledged he knew they wouldn't be able to afford any injuries up front. They've had some. And they've been costly.

Still, Taggart was optimistic about the second half of the season. As long as one thing in particular gets cleaned up.

"I think we're getting better in every aspect," Taggart said. "We've got to take care of the football. ... That's so important and keeping up with our tempo on offense. That's really important."

No timetable for Dickerson

Starting offensive lineman Landon Dickerson was not practicing again on Monday for the Seminoles. He missed all of last week and wasn't dressed out for the game in Miami.

Taggart said he's not sure when his starting tackle will be back.

"Landon had a setback that last game against Louisville," Taggart said. "There's no timetable right now when he'll be back."

Taggart looks for 'clarity' on controversial penalty

The Florida State head coach is still looking for an explanation on why his team was penalized for an illegal forward pass in Saturday's game.

Taggart said he sent a clip of the play to the head of ACC officials to get "clarity" on what exactly the Seminoles did wrong on the D.J. Matthews' TD pass to Keith Gavin. He said diplomatically on Monday that he wanted to make sure they practiced it the right way, so he wanted to be clear in what the infraction was. You know, if there actually was an infraction.

"Again," he added, "we thought we did it the right way."

Talk about this story with other Florida State football fans in the Tribal Council