FSU Football: 3 reasons defense improves drastically in 2019

FSU football had a decent defense if you delve into the stats from 2018. However, it did not live up to expectation in Harlon Barnett’s first season.

I’ve written about FSU football and how Harlon Barnett deserves a pass for how the FSU defense performed in 2018.

There were a lot of factors going against that man from the jump that most people want to overlook.

No, they are not excuses but legitimate factors that affected how that defense performed.

Not only did he inherit players that he only had a few months to work with before the first game. But players like Marvin Wilson missed most of spring and fall camp with an injury. Two more starters in Levonta Taylor and Stanford Samuels were playing injured the first few games with the former missing the last four games of the season.

There was absolutely zero experience at linebacker with Dontavious Jackson being the most experienced linebacker with 37 tackles going into last season.

Aside from Brian Burns, there was no other proven defensive end that could rush the quarterback going into the season.

There were four true freshmen who played a significant number of snaps with three of those coming in the secondary which was the worst unit on the team.

With all that being second I expect the defense to rebound in 2019. They were actually decent in a few categories last year. FSU ranked No. 20 against the run and No. 40 on third down conversions (36.50 percent).

Their biggest problems were lack of pass rush and tackles for loss coupled with the offense turning the ball over nearly two times per game and giving offenses short fields.

Here’s why they’ll be drastically better in 2019.