FSU football: 3 takeaways from Adam Fuller’s press conference

Third Down Conversions

I wrote about how FSU football coaches felt James Blackman played well aside from a handful of plays, and how missed assignments and penalties contributed to their lack of production on offense.

Well, Georgia Tech did quite the opposite. They were 8 of 16 on third-down conversions, and 5 of 7 on third-down conversions in the second half.

Here’s a list of the yardage gained to convert the first down:

• 4-yards
• 4-yards
• 1-yard
• 5-yards
• 13-yards
• 3-yards
• 5-yards
• 3-yards

It’s easy to notice the pattern, right? They kept their third downs to manageable downs where the first down could be picked up with either the pass or the run. That’s winning football, not having your quarterback dropping back on third and 8, or more 47 percent of the time expecting to convert the first down consistently.

It also goes back to FSU’s inability to get pressure on their quarterback or stop the run on early downs. Georgia Tech did a solid job of getting the ball out of Jeff Sim’s hands quickly, which helped negate the pass rush too, but ultimately FSU’s defense has to create more third and long situations to have a shot to get off the field consistently.