FSU Football: Quarterback observations from the spring game

James Blackman

I became a big fan of James Blackman last season. The kid has competitive fire but unfortunately was thrust into a no-win situation as a true freshman.

All in all, I thought he performed admirable and started to progress as the season went on culminating in a MVP performance in the bowl game.

Blackman started the game off a little shaky, but started to get it together on his second series. The offensive line got obliterated (some of them were playing both ways) as Blackman was under duress a lot early.

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However, he began to target Deonte Sheffield who had a solid day and Keith Gavin who was blanketed by Keith Meyers most of the day.

In fact, Blackman threw two or three beautiful passes to Gavin along the sidelines that you’d expect Gavin to be able to haul in. I wouldn’t count those as drops as they were tough catches, but there were at least three drops (among all of Blackman’s receivers) by my count.

There was one glaring miss on his first possession where he double clutched and didn’t throw the pass to Deonte Sheffield down the sidelines. Blackman also misread a zone read play at one point.

When given time Blackman was on target with most of his throws and fairly decisive with where he wanted to go with the ball.