FSU Football: Why are good practices not translating to games?

FSU football has apparently been practicing well this season but it hasn’t transferred to actual games.

FSU football has a crucial game against Boston College Saturday afternoon. If they win that game they have the opportunity to play next week against Florida for a chance to extend their bowl streak.

A loss against Boston College and the season is essentially over aside from the Florida game.

There will be no 15 extra bowl practices the team could absolutely use and they’ll start recruiting for next year.

Willie Taggart spoke with media Thursday morning and indicated the team has had a good week of practice with a lot of energy.

That seems to be the norm, but those practices never seem to translate over to actual games. Why is that?

Thoughts

As a former college athlete I always heard you play how you practice and I’ll be the first to say I’m not a huge fan of that.

I DO believe there are some players that simply are not practice players but can turn it on when those lights come on. I’ve played with some and probably would have categorized myself like that.

I hated practice. What is going on at FSU practice though? How are they having great practices yet continue to make the same mistakes over and over each week?

It just doesn’t make sense. The players did seem as though they continued to play hard in the last two blowout losses. It’s not really an effort issue.

Is it simply the same psychology of taking good reps from the driving range to the actual golf course?

If you play golf at all you know what I’m talking about. You can go to the range and the drives are long a straight. The iron game is crisp with good ball strikes.

However, as soon as you get in that first tee box all the questions come. Will I be able to hit it straight down this fairway just as I did at the range? If you don’t and the first hole is a triple bogey usually the rest of the round is trash as well.

That seems to be what’s happening with FSU football right now. It’s all psychological in that they have had so many bad things happen they kind of expect them to happen and the doubt creeps in.

Once that first tee shot goes in the rough(early turnover or three and out or TD allowed) the rest of the game is trash as well.

Somehow they have to get those practice reps(if indeed they have been good practices) to translate to the games.

The only way for that to happen is to have some early success in the actual games. Here’s to hoping it happens Saturday against Boston College.