FSU hires Raymond Woodie to coach linebackers

Raymond Woodie will join Florida State’s coaching staff under Willie Taggart per Bruce Feldman. He will coach LBs. Whether that will be outside or all linebackers will depend on the future hiring at defensive coordinator.

Woodie is a name that has been connected to FSU on Tomahawk Nation’s assistant coach tracker since Taggart’s hiring was made official.

For Woodie, it will be his fourth straight stop at a Taggart-led program. Taggart gave him his first collegiate position as the defensive ends coach at Western Kentucky in 2010, Taggart’s first year as a head coach. Woodie has followed Taggart ever since. He also coached linebackers for one year at WKU before moving to USF with Taggart in 2013. There he coached linebackers for two years before becoming an assistant head coach and special teams coach in 2015 and the defensive coordinator in 2016. At Oregon, Woodie retained his special teams duties while also coaching outside linebackers under Taggart.

This new position at FSU will mark a return home for Woodie. He graduated from Palmetto (Fla.) High School, where he also served as head coach from 2007-2009, and played his college football at Bethune-Cookman in Daytona Beach. Woodie’s hire will be yet another that sees the Seminoles’ staff get younger: he’s just 44 years old.

Tied into that, FSU will also be getting a boost in recruiting at the position. Woodie currently ranks as the No. 41 recruiter in the nation for the 2018 recruiting class, the best on Oregon’s entire staff and better than anyone on Florida State’s staff last year.