Key matchups vs. FSU

Key matchups vs. FSU

DMoney
DMoney

Comments (94)

Good stuff, D. Nnadi (you can throw in Christmas in there, too) will make it very difficult to run inside. I don't think we'll have much success there (heck, we didn't really against Duke). Sweat terrifies me going against McD. I really like our DL vs their OL matchup a lot.

As for other areas, I think they can match up 1x1 against our WRs not named Richards. If I were FSU, I'd double Richards and let Berrios, Harley, Cager beat us. Those 3 guys have struggled getting separation against press coverage this year. I hope we're creative in the passing game.

FSU's defense is pretty tough - Richt is going to have to get creative on offense with misdirections, pace, etc.

No one has covered Berrios this year. We must be watching different games if you think he's had trouble getting open.

Berrios has succeeded mostly against a zone coverage or if someone (safety or nickel) plays off of him like on the seam route against Duke.

Time for Chris Herndon to make some NFL money.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, winner, winner chicken dinner. Expect him to have a huge game tomorrow. That's the mismatch right there.
 
Good stuff, D. Nnadi (you can throw in Christmas in there, too) will make it very difficult to run inside. I don't think we'll have much success there (heck, we didn't really against Duke). Sweat terrifies me going against McD. I really like our DL vs their OL matchup a lot.

As for other areas, I think they can match up 1x1 against our WRs not named Richards. If I were FSU, I'd double Richards and let Berrios, Harley, Cager beat us. Those 3 guys have struggled getting separation against press coverage this year. I hope we're creative in the passing game.

FSU's defense is pretty tough - Richt is going to have to get creative on offense with misdirections, pace, etc.

No one has covered Berrios this year. We must be watching different games if you think he's had trouble getting open.

Berrios has succeeded mostly against a zone coverage or if someone (safety or nickel) plays off of him like on the seam route against Duke.

Berrios has been open all year, and that'll continue tomorrow. He's playing where he should have been playing all along this year.

Berrios has done absolutely nothing but play above is size and ability since he's gotten here. Can anyone remember him dropping a ball or fumbling? Dude is going to do tomorrow the same thing he's done for 4 years. Ball the **** out. We just have to get him the ball like we've been doing.
 
Good stuff, D. Nnadi (you can throw in Christmas in there, too) will make it very difficult to run inside. I don't think we'll have much success there (heck, we didn't really against Duke). Sweat terrifies me going against McD. I really like our DL vs their OL matchup a lot.

As for other areas, I think they can match up 1x1 against our WRs not named Richards. If I were FSU, I'd double Richards and let Berrios, Harley, Cager beat us. Those 3 guys have struggled getting separation against press coverage this year. I hope we're creative in the passing game.

FSU's defense is pretty tough - Richt is going to have to get creative on offense with misdirections, pace, etc.

No one has covered Berrios this year. We must be watching different games if you think he's had trouble getting open.

Berrios has succeeded mostly against a zone coverage or if someone (safety or nickel) plays off of him like on the seam route against Duke.

Time for Chris Herndon to make some NFL money.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, winner, winner chicken dinner. Expect him to have a huge game tomorrow. That's the mismatch right there.

My concern is that this mismatch was available to us last year except we had an even better TE in Njoku and we did absolutely nothing to exploit it. Richt has left a **** ton to be desired in terms of play calling....
 
Good stuff, D. Nnadi (you can throw in Christmas in there, too) will make it very difficult to run inside. I don't think we'll have much success there (heck, we didn't really against Duke). Sweat terrifies me going against McD. I really like our DL vs their OL matchup a lot.

As for other areas, I think they can match up 1x1 against our WRs not named Richards. If I were FSU, I'd double Richards and let Berrios, Harley, Cager beat us. Those 3 guys have struggled getting separation against press coverage this year. I hope we're creative in the passing game.

FSU's defense is pretty tough - Richt is going to have to get creative on offense with misdirections, pace, etc.

No one has covered Berrios this year. We must be watching different games if you think he's had trouble getting open.

Berrios has succeeded mostly against a zone coverage or if someone (safety or nickel) plays off of him like on the seam route against Duke.

Berrios has been open all year, and that'll continue tomorrow. He's playing where he should have been playing all along this year.

Berrios has done absolutely nothing but play above is size and ability since he's gotten here. Can anyone remember him dropping a ball or fumbling? Dude is going to do tomorrow the same thing he's done for 4 years. Ball the **** out. We just have to get him the ball like we've been doing.

Berrios is a real threat this year.
 
No one has covered Berrios this year. We must be watching different games if you think he's had trouble getting open.

Berrios has succeeded mostly against a zone coverage or if someone (safety or nickel) plays off of him like on the seam route against Duke.

Time for Chris Herndon to make some NFL money.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, winner, winner chicken dinner. Expect him to have a huge game tomorrow. That's the mismatch right there.

My concern is that this mismatch was available to us last year except we had an even better TE in Njoku and we did absolutely nothing to exploit it. Richt has left a **** ton to be desired in terms of play calling....

Actually njoku always seemed to have a momentum/ drive killing drop during every big game just go back and watch
 
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No one has covered Berrios this year. We must be watching different games if you think he's had trouble getting open.

Berrios has succeeded mostly against a zone coverage or if someone (safety or nickel) plays off of him like on the seam route against Duke.

Time for Chris Herndon to make some NFL money.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, winner, winner chicken dinner. Expect him to have a huge game tomorrow. That's the mismatch right there.

My concern is that this mismatch was available to us last year except we had an even better TE in Njoku and we did absolutely nothing to exploit it. Richt has left a **** ton to be desired in terms of play calling....

Play calling TE seams is a little more difficult when your O-line is getting the **** kicked out of them and you need to constantly keep 6 back to defend 4. I love all these generic "open the playbook" or Richt needs to hire an OC" porsters. I seriously saw someone saying we need to run more I formation...with our walk-on FB who's yet to see the field this year. For the porsters out there second guessing Richt's creativity or play calling, I present this little blurb:

"Richt was promoted to offensive coordinator in 1994 upon the departure of Brad Scott. Under Richt, Florida State had one of college football's most explosive offenses. In his seven years as offensive coordinator, the Seminoles ranked in the nation’s top five scoring offenses for five seasons, they were top twelve in total offense for five seasons, and top twelve in passing offense for five seasons. Richt coached two Heisman Trophy winning quarterbacks: Charlie Ward and Chris Weinke. Richt coached a total of six FSU quarterbacks to the NFL, including Ward, Weinke, Brad Johnson (Tampa Bay Buccaneers), Danny Kanell (New York Giants), Danny McManus (Kansas City Chiefs) and Peter Tom Willis (Chicago Bears). During this period, FSU won two national championships (1993 and 1999).[7] During this time, Richt won two national championships."

Trust me. Richt knows how to call a game. If he's not calling some of the more exotic stuff, it's because he either believes that it won't work against our opponent, or that we can't execute it with enough consistency to be effective.
 
No one has covered Berrios this year. We must be watching different games if you think he's had trouble getting open.

Berrios has succeeded mostly against a zone coverage or if someone (safety or nickel) plays off of him like on the seam route against Duke.

Time for Chris Herndon to make some NFL money.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, winner, winner chicken dinner. Expect him to have a huge game tomorrow. That's the mismatch right there.

My concern is that this mismatch was available to us last year except we had an even better TE in Njoku and we did absolutely nothing to exploit it. Richt has left a **** ton to be desired in terms of play calling....

Or Kaaya did not take what he was given. Brad was effective in a perfect pocket. Could run through his progressions. You had Herndon and or Njoku have to chip or max protect Kaaya against FSU. Think of Brad's flying tooth.

I like Herndon in the short passing game tomorrow. Easy pitch and catch similar to what he did against Toledo. I'll take 8 for 80 yards tomorrow.
 
Pentagon, I like that matchup only if someone other than Thomas is covering him. Thomas matches up well against Herndon, imo.
 
Good stuff, D. Nnadi (you can throw in Christmas in there, too) will make it very difficult to run inside. I don't think we'll have much success there (heck, we didn't really against Duke). Sweat terrifies me going against McD. I really like our DL vs their OL matchup a lot.

As for other areas, I think they can match up 1x1 against our WRs not named Richards. If I were FSU, I'd double Richards and let Berrios, Harley, Cager beat us. Those 3 guys have struggled getting separation against press coverage this year. I hope we're creative in the passing game.

FSU's defense is pretty tough - Richt is going to have to get creative on offense with misdirections, pace, etc.

No one has covered Berrios this year. We must be watching different games if you think he's had trouble getting open.

Berrios has succeeded mostly against a zone coverage or if someone (safety or nickel) plays off of him like on the seam route against Duke.

Berrios has been open all year, and that'll continue tomorrow. He's playing where he should have been playing all along this year.

Berrios has done absolutely nothing but play above is size and ability since he's gotten here. Can anyone remember him dropping a ball or fumbling? Dude is going to do tomorrow the same thing he's done for 4 years. Ball the **** out. We just have to get him the ball like we've been doing.

He dropped a touchdown pass against FSU. He's really done a whole lot of nothing his first three years here. He' finally putting it together this year and become a reliable big play target. I give him plenty of credit for making improvements this season but the past three years, he's been JAG.
 
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Just run those crossing routes b/c FSU's defense had no clue on how to stop Wake and get Herndon and Richards going early. Easy win
 
Good stuff, D. Nnadi (you can throw in Christmas in there, too) will make it very difficult to run inside. I don't think we'll have much success there (heck, we didn't really against Duke). Sweat terrifies me going against McD. I really like our DL vs their OL matchup a lot.

As for other areas, I think they can match up 1x1 against our WRs not named Richards. If I were FSU, I'd double Richards and let Berrios, Harley, Cager beat us. Those 3 guys have struggled getting separation against press coverage this year. I hope we're creative in the passing game.

FSU's defense is pretty tough - Richt is going to have to get creative on offense with misdirections, pace, etc.

No one has covered Berrios this year. We must be watching different games if you think he's had trouble getting open.

Kid is a terror this year
 
I'm at a conference in Orlando and haven't been able to do the usual breakdown. Really upset about it because I did so much homework on FSU over the summer and watched them closely up to this point in the season. Irma f'd everything up.

In shorter than I'd like, here are the key matchups I think will weigh heavily the game:

Mark Richt (and support) vs Charley Kelly (and support)

Last year, Kelly had a field day switching up coverages from what they had previously shown and to more consistently aggressive coverage schemes. Richt called about every formation in the playbook and never had a real answer. Primarily, my concern was about Richt using Berrios on the outside on in-breaking routes and bigger guys (like Herndon and Njoku) inside on outbreaking routes or as decoys. We essentially let them off the hook in terms of their previously suspect middle of the field. We'll talk about that in a second, but I want to reiterate that we will once again NOT see success trying to get outbreaking routes on smaller, quicker guys like Trey Marshall, etc.

If we don't see motion in this game, I'm not sure what to say. Wake used it effectively to both get FSU in matchups and to force them to tip their hand at times. Passing on early downs will be a key statistic to watch.

UM WRs/TEs vs FSU DBs

This stems a bit from the coaching matchup above, but there's more. We'll get a very good idea by taking a look at how they shade Richards early in the game. If Richt fails to use him as the "queen" on his chess board, it'll be disappointing. If Richards is used at all WR positions - SE, Flanker, Slot - we can put our best effort in challenging the very talented FSU DBackfield vertically.

If FSU is arrogant enough to toss Mcfadden at him in single coverage, I think Richards can have a breakout game against a "big name." If we keep our passing offense primarily outside the hashes, I think we'll likely struggle. A key player matchup to watch here will be FSU's Kyle Meyers. He is very talented. I'd like to see him forced to read combination routes or get naturally picked off inside because he can hang athletically with all of our guys and probably has an [athletic] advantage on Berrios. I think Berrios can beat him on the underneath routes, though. Get him in whip routes and moving across the field, please. This is a call to Richt to throw out everything he's got against this DBackfield.

People are thinking about Matthew Thomas against Herndon, but you're more likely to see Trey Marshall try to slow him down, which is where Richt must go vertical and Rosier must trust it.

UM RBs vs FSU LBs

To quickly follow up on the above, it's up to Richt to use Herndon and our inside WRs to push these guys back and have Walton/Homer trail and sit directly behind those routes. The Kansas City Chiefs do this amazingly well with Kelce and Kareem Hunt. It should be a staple in this game to get our RBs matched up in the middle of the field against their LBs.

UM Safeties/Nickel vs FSU WRs/slot

This is a huge one. It'll depend largely on Fisher's willingness to move away from a lot of the I-Form he flashes and into spread sets. If FSU runs as much I-Form against us as they did against Wake, I think we win by double digits. I strongly doubt Fisher would hand us that type of advantage, so I'd look for him to attempt something closer to what Toledo did with their spread sets and multiple WRs to the boundary than what Duke did with their TE. If I'm helping gameplan FSU's offense, I also attempt Murray inside and see what work he can do in some single matchups against Redwine.

Finally, trying to think like Jimbo Fisher, I expect some max protect sets with as low as 3 eligible receivers running routes. In those, combination routes exposing post and corner patterns could be beneficial for their big WR, Tate.
I expect Manny Diaz to blitz a good amount tomorrow, but from different platforms. I especially anticipate the Corner blitz.

There's so, so much more, but I'm stuck in this m'f'in conference. Before last year, given the injury states of both teams, I thought the Canes should have won last year's matchup by 10+. I think they should win tomorrow by 7. We'll see if they can finally get over the hump.
 
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Berrios has succeeded mostly against a zone coverage or if someone (safety or nickel) plays off of him like on the seam route against Duke.

Time for Chris Herndon to make some NFL money.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, winner, winner chicken dinner. Expect him to have a huge game tomorrow. That's the mismatch right there.

My concern is that this mismatch was available to us last year except we had an even better TE in Njoku and we did absolutely nothing to exploit it. Richt has left a **** ton to be desired in terms of play calling....

Play calling TE seams is a little more difficult when your O-line is getting the **** kicked out of them and you need to constantly keep 6 back to defend 4. I love all these generic "open the playbook" or Richt needs to hire an OC" porsters. I seriously saw someone saying we need to run more I formation...with our walk-on FB who's yet to see the field this year. For the porsters out there second guessing Richt's creativity or play calling, I present this little blurb:

"Richt was promoted to offensive coordinator in 1994 upon the departure of Brad Scott. Under Richt, Florida State had one of college football's most explosive offenses. In his seven years as offensive coordinator, the Seminoles ranked in the nation’s top five scoring offenses for five seasons, they were top twelve in total offense for five seasons, and top twelve in passing offense for five seasons. Richt coached two Heisman Trophy winning quarterbacks: Charlie Ward and Chris Weinke. Richt coached a total of six FSU quarterbacks to the NFL, including Ward, Weinke, Brad Johnson (Tampa Bay Buccaneers), Danny Kanell (New York Giants), Danny McManus (Kansas City Chiefs) and Peter Tom Willis (Chicago Bears). During this period, FSU won two national championships (1993 and 1999).[7] During this time, Richt won two national championships."

Trust me. Richt knows how to call a game. If he's not calling some of the more exotic stuff, it's because he either believes that it won't work against our opponent, or that we can't execute it with enough consistency to be effective.

Last year, UL boat raped FSU by attacking the middle of the field with crossing routes and such. It has been talked about ad nauseum here on that is how you pick apart a Kelly defense, their LBs are a weak point. We strolled into our game and decided to challenge FSU's DBs outside the hashes and it played right into their hands. We should have ran away with it last year. This had nothing to do with max protect, the middle of the field is always available against FSU, even during the Mickey Andrew days...
 
There's so, so much more, but I'm stuck in this m'f'in conference. Before last year, given the injury states of both teams, I thought the Canes should have won last year's matchup by 10+. I think they should win tomorrow by 7. We'll see if they can finally get over the hump.

Interesting that you felt better about last year than you do about this year. To me, this is the first time in 7-8 years that we clearly have more good players than FSU -- particularly at the QB position. Last year we all thought Kaaya was better than Frenchie but turned out to be wrong. This year it is undeniably true that Rosier >>> Blackman.
 
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There's so, so much more, but I'm stuck in this m'f'in conference. Before last year, given the injury states of both teams, I thought the Canes should have won last year's matchup by 10+. I think they should win tomorrow by 7. We'll see if they can finally get over the hump.

Interesting that you felt better about last year than you do about this year. To me, this is the first time in 7-8 years that we clearly have more good players than FSU -- particularly at the QB position. Last year we all thought Kaaya was better than Frenchie but turned out to be wrong. This year it is undeniably true that Rosier >>> Blackman.
It was at home on a nearly perfect night and the middle of their back 7 defense was soft as ****. Ermon Lane was pushed out there at FS. Jeez. Even so, we should have been up 20-3, if we hadn't let them off the hook. Tomorrow is away against a very good defense (being somewhat overlooked). Some of those specific plays where their guys have been unfocused, a little less motivated after being gas'd, etc., will all go away in this rivalry. Their QB should be haunted, though, and we need to capitalize early. I'd be surprised if he came back from something like a 13-3 lead against our defense. The weather also factors in tomorrow.
 
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I'm at a conference in Orlando and haven't been able to do the usual breakdown. Really upset about it because I did so much homework on FSU over the summer and watched them closely up to this point in the season. Irma f'd everything up.

In shorter than I'd like, here are the key matchups I think will weigh heavily the game:

Mark Richt (and support) vs Charley Kelly (and support)

Last year, Kelly had a field day switching up coverages from what they had previously shown and to more consistently aggressive coverage schemes. Richt called about every formation in the playbook and never had a real answer. Primarily, my concern was about Richt using Berrios on the outside on in-breaking routes and bigger guys (like Herndon and Njoku) inside on outbreaking routes or as decoys. We essentially let them off the hook in terms of their previously suspect middle of the field. We'll talk about that in a second, but I want to reiterate that we will once again NOT see success trying to get outbreaking routes on smaller, quicker guys like Trey Marshall, etc.

If we don't see motion in this game, I'm not sure what to say. Wake used it effectively to both get FSU in matchups and to force them to tip their hand at times. Passing on early downs will be a key statistic to watch.

UM WRs/TEs vs FSU DBs

This stems a bit from the coaching matchup above, but there's more. We'll get a very good idea by taking a look at how they shade Richards early in the game. If Richt fails to use him as the "queen" on his chess board, it'll be disappointing. If Richards is used at all WR positions - SE, Flanker, Slot - we can put our best effort in challenging the very talented FSU DBackfield vertically.

If FSU is arrogant enough to toss Mcfadden at him in single coverage, I think Richards can have a breakout game against a "big name." If we keep our passing offense primarily outside the hashes, I think we'll likely struggle. A key player matchup to watch here will be FSU's Kyle Meyers. He is very talented. I'd like to see him forced to read combination routes or get naturally picked off inside because he can hang athletically with all of our guys and probably has an [athletic] advantage on Berrios. I think Berrios can beat him on the underneath routes, though. Get him in whip routes and moving across the field, please. This is a call to Richt to throw out everything he's got against this DBackfield.

People are thinking about Matthew Thomas against Herndon, but you're more likely to see Trey Marshall try to slow him down, which is where Richt must go vertical and Rosier must trust it.

UM RBs vs FSU LBs

To quickly follow up on the above, it's up to Richt to use Herndon and our inside WRs to push these guys back and have Walton/Homer trail and sit directly behind those routes. The Kansas City Chiefs do this amazingly well with Kelce and Kareem Hunt. It should be a staple in this game to get our RBs matched up in the middle of the field against their LBs.

UM Safeties/Nickel vs FSU WRs/slot

This is a huge one. It'll depend largely on Fisher's willingness to move away from a lot of the I-Form he flashes and into spread sets. If FSU runs as much I-Form against us as they did against Wake, I think we win by double digits. I strongly doubt Fisher would hand us that type of advantage, so I'd look for him to attempt something closer to what Toledo did with their spread sets and multiple WRs to the boundary than what Duke did with their TE. If I'm helping gameplan FSU's offense, I also attempt Murray inside and see what work he can do in some single matchups against Redwine.

Finally, trying to think like Jimbo Fisher, I expect some max protect sets with as low as 3 eligible receivers running routes. In those, combination routes exposing post and corner patterns could be beneficial for their big WR, Tate.
I expect Manny Diaz to blitz a good amount tomorrow, but from different platforms. I especially anticipate the Corner blitz.

There's so, so much more, but I'm stuck in this m'f'in conference. Before last year, given the injury states of both teams, I thought the Canes should have won last year's matchup by 10+. I think they should win tomorrow by 7. We'll see if they can finally get over the hump.

Interesting that you felt better about last year than you do about this year. To me, this is the first time in 7-8 years that we clearly have more good players than FSU -- particularly at the QB position. Last year we all thought Kaaya was better than Frenchie but turned out to be wrong. This year it is undeniably true that Rosier >>> Blackman.
It was at home and the middle of their back 7 defense was soft as ****. Ermon Lane was pushed out there at FS. Jeez. Even so, we should have been up 20-3, if we hadn't let them off the hook. Tomorrow is away against a very good defense (being somewhat overlooked). Some of those specific plays where their guys have been unfocused, a little less motivated after being gas'd, etc., will all go away in this rivalry. Their QB should be haunted, though, and we need to capitalize early. I'd be surprised if he came back from something like a 13-3 lead against our defense.

If we get out to an early double digit lead they will fold and we will boat race.
 
I'm at a conference in Orlando and haven't been able to do the usual breakdown. Really upset about it because I did so much homework on FSU over the summer and watched them closely up to this point in the season. Irma f'd everything up.

In shorter than I'd like, here are the key matchups I think will weigh heavily the game:

Mark Richt (and support) vs Charley Kelly (and support)

Last year, Kelly had a field day switching up coverages from what they had previously shown and to more consistently aggressive coverage schemes. Richt called about every formation in the playbook and never had a real answer. Primarily, my concern was about Richt using Berrios on the outside on in-breaking routes and bigger guys (like Herndon and Njoku) inside on outbreaking routes or as decoys. We essentially let them off the hook in terms of their previously suspect middle of the field. We'll talk about that in a second, but I want to reiterate that we will once again NOT see success trying to get outbreaking routes on smaller, quicker guys like Trey Marshall, etc.

If we don't see motion in this game, I'm not sure what to say. Wake used it effectively to both get FSU in matchups and to force them to tip their hand at times. Passing on early downs will be a key statistic to watch.

UM WRs/TEs vs FSU DBs

This stems a bit from the coaching matchup above, but there's more. We'll get a very good idea by taking a look at how they shade Richards early in the game. If Richt fails to use him as the "queen" on his chess board, it'll be disappointing. If Richards is used at all WR positions - SE, Flanker, Slot - we can put our best effort in challenging the very talented FSU DBackfield vertically.

If FSU is arrogant enough to toss Mcfadden at him in single coverage, I think Richards can have a breakout game against a "big name." If we keep our passing offense primarily outside the hashes, I think we'll likely struggle. A key player matchup to watch here will be FSU's Kyle Meyers. He is very talented. I'd like to see him forced to read combination routes or get naturally picked off inside because he can hang athletically with all of our guys and probably has an [athletic] advantage on Berrios. I think Berrios can beat him on the underneath routes, though. Get him in whip routes and moving across the field, please. This is a call to Richt to throw out everything he's got against this DBackfield.

People are thinking about Matthew Thomas against Herndon, but you're more likely to see Trey Marshall try to slow him down, which is where Richt must go vertical and Rosier must trust it.

UM RBs vs FSU LBs

To quickly follow up on the above, it's up to Richt to use Herndon and our inside WRs to push these guys back and have Walton/Homer trail and sit directly behind those routes. The Kansas City Chiefs do this amazingly well with Kelce and Kareem Hunt. It should be a staple in this game to get our RBs matched up in the middle of the field against their LBs.

UM Safeties/Nickel vs FSU WRs/slot

This is a huge one. It'll depend largely on Fisher's willingness to move away from a lot of the I-Form he flashes and into spread sets. If FSU runs as much I-Form against us as they did against Wake, I think we win by double digits. I strongly doubt Fisher would hand us that type of advantage, so I'd look for him to attempt something closer to what Toledo did with their spread sets and multiple WRs to the boundary than what Duke did with their TE. If I'm helping gameplan FSU's offense, I also attempt Murray inside and see what work he can do in some single matchups against Redwine.

Finally, trying to think like Jimbo Fisher, I expect some max protect sets with as low as 3 eligible receivers running routes. In those, combination routes exposing post and corner patterns could be beneficial for their big WR, Tate.
I expect Manny Diaz to blitz a good amount tomorrow, but from different platforms. I especially anticipate the Corner blitz.

There's so, so much more, but I'm stuck in this m'f'in conference. Before last year, given the injury states of both teams, I thought the Canes should have won last year's matchup by 10+. I think they should win tomorrow by 7. We'll see if they can finally get over the hump.

Interesting that you felt better about last year than you do about this year. To me, this is the first time in 7-8 years that we clearly have more good players than FSU -- particularly at the QB position. Last year we all thought Kaaya was better than Frenchie but turned out to be wrong. This year it is undeniably true that Rosier >>> Blackman.
It was at home and the middle of their back 7 defense was soft as ****. Ermon Lane was pushed out there at FS. Jeez. Even so, we should have been up 20-3, if we hadn't let them off the hook. Tomorrow is away against a very good defense (being somewhat overlooked). Some of those specific plays where their guys have been unfocused, a little less motivated after being gas'd, etc., will all go away in this rivalry. Their QB should be haunted, though, and we need to capitalize early. I'd be surprised if he came back from something like a 13-3 lead against our defense.

If we get out to an early double digit lead they will fold and we will boat race.
There are pros and cons to bad weather tomorrow, but I'd have preferred a perfectly clear day than a rain-induced slugfest. We can win that way, but it just narrows the margin of error (for both teams), I think.
 
attack Stanford Samuels Jr as well. Hes not good and if matched up against Richards 1 on 1..good lord.

Donaldson had problems with an athletic dt...Nnandi and Christmas are guys that will try to just bully you.He may fair better against them. I would be running stuff RIGHT at their ends..both of them are light in the *** and just want to get upfield...all that side to side play calling they will eat up.

On defense prepare for alot of slip screens,...bubbles..tackle well.

When they get one on one expect the jump balls to Tate who is really good with it. I would want to hit this qb hard and early
 
This game is all on Richt.

They have a TF QB making his 3rd start, their OL is decimated & they're not actually playing for anything.

Kirby Smart has been kicking *** & taking names with a TF QB, a team half full of Richt recruits & beat ND in their house.

34 year old Lincoln Riley marched into the Horseshoe & slapped around Urban Liar, for perspective, Coach Richt has been coaching for 32 years.

Dave Doeren just beat'em at Doak, Wake **** near got'em too, anybody wanna dare say NC St & Wake are better than Miami?

Point being, Richt has an illustrious record with a phenomenal winning percentage, but he's struggled in big games. This will be the easiest big game he's ever had to Coach, need to get that Big Game monkey off his back & this is the perfect situation for it.

Don't care how ferocious FSU's Defense is, NC State had no problem figuring them out, Bama beat them with Calvin Ridley by himself, Petrino's overrated *** cracked their skull open last year, **** even Herman with mediocre G5 3-star talent at HTown whipped their ***.

I'm not saying their Defense sucks, what I'm saying is, a lot of other teams figured out how to move the ball with ease against their highly ranked athletic Defense. Their are no more excuses for Richt, don't care about OL or whatever limitations, figure it out & beat'em.

They are not impossible to beat, we've seen a bunch of other teams do it over the last 2 years, we shouldn't be the only team that can't beat them, rivarly be damned.

I trust & believe in this staff & think they'll get it done, I'm not giving FSU too much credit, Canes win 37-20.

We have already come close to beating them with less talent and coaching. There should be no excuse this year with no Crabs, Frenchie, or **** who has killed us past few years.
 
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