FSU Football: Assessing every third down play for ‘Noles defense
By Kelvin Hunt
FSU football has been awful defensively on third and long situations. We look at EVERY third down this season by game.
If I told you FSU football defense under Charles Kelly wasn’t atrocious under certain circumstances you probably wouldn’t believe it. The perception is too far gone to try to remedy.
Kelly’s defense went into the Syracuse game allowing 5.12 yards per play which is No. 36 in the nation. It’s not up to par for the athletes FSU has on defense, but it’s still not garbage like some other categories.
We mentioned that FSU actually held Syracuse to under their yearly average on a yards per play based (4.87 vs. 5.26) Saturday. However, it was their third down defense that was atrocious and the follower asked what the difference was between the two.
Well, we listen to our fans and he gave us an idea to look at FSU’s entire year when it comes to third down defense.
We’re going to go game-by-game and look at this situational problem one of the main faults of a Charles Kelly defense.
Prior to the Syracuse game the FSU defense allowed opposing offenses to convert third downs at a 35.71 percent clip. What we want to know is how many of those conversions were third and forever, plus more.
Let’s get into it.