Honest assessment about last night. Encouraging BUT

Sep 17, 2023, 9:49 AM

a little discouraging with respect to the O Line. We saw Shipley and Spiller get into it when Spiller questioned Shipley's effort on 2nd and goal----Shipley claims the O Line isn't getting any push when needed and didn't back down from Spiller. He's right. They aren't. We had issues getting any push on short-yardage situations all night long. This has been an issue for the last two seasons. Bottom line is, the O Line is the weak link to this team. Dabo blew sunshine up our collective azzes this summer telling us how "good" they were. Our center spends more time our backfield than Shipley. He gets blown off the ball every, single series. I've seen no improvement over three games against inferior competition and that's concerning.

FSU will overload this O Line with a lot of different pressures/looks to force Cade out of the pocket and make him uncomfortable. Zero doubt this is what they will do. We will see if the O Line can respond.

Issues at WR continue. The fluke play where Randall caught the ball on 3rd and long was due to the fact that he ran the wrong route---but got rewarded with the fluke deflection/catch off of Williams' hands. Hmmm.

Special teams is a dumpster fire at this point No other way to sugar coat it If we need a FG kick to win or force OT, we are screwed.

Now for the good. And there was a lot of it.

On the positive side, Cade didn't make any mistakes that cost us. Yes, he forced one ball to Stellato that under normal circumstances against better competition, would have been intercepted. But he managed the game and went through his progressions MUCH better than the previous two games. Kudos to Cade for showing major improvement from last week.

We saw Barnes emerge and play out of his mind. It begs the question as to whether Mukuba will have a starting job when he's back from injury. TJ Parker is our best DE. He should be starting in place of Mascoll. If "Best is the Standard", there is zero doubt about these two. Tyler Brown's emergence is encouraging-he has elite burst. Briningstool was a factor--also very encouraging and he looked sharp. Lukus was also solid. Terrell made some good plays. Overall I thought the defense played very well---in short, good enough to beat FSU.

But a lot of question marks on special teams/offense remain. The issues on the O Line are particularly perplexing after the glowing reviews Dabo gave this unit over the fall camp. WR play continues to be questionable, with receivers running bad routes and missing blocks. From all accounts Gunn seems to have great performances in practice, but when the lights go on, he loses composure and becomes erratic. Swanson had a subpar performance as well. Fortunately, FAU didn't bring Ray Guy last night so it was a wash.

FSU comes into Tigertown with a few issues that have emerged (poor LB play, vulnerable to the run), so this game really comes down to the O Line IMO. If our O Line can play up to the competition, I like our chances.