FSU football: Why lack of confidence is biggest problem for the Noles

Final Thoughts

Good teams feed off of one another in different phases of the game. If an offense scores a touchdown on the first drive, that should inspire the defense and so forth and so on.

However, I feel like this team doesn’t trust one another or the coaches, especially on the defensive side of the ball. This situation is similar to when I was in high school getting close to dunking a basketball for the first time.

I’d go up and get hung on the rim or lose the ball on the way up. Sometimes I’d get over the rim, and the ball would hit the back of the rim.

There was this day that I finally got the dunk to go down. I thought I was THAT guy! I tried to dunk again and got hung on the rim the very next time. I got hung on the rim several more times that day and didn’t dunk again.

It wasn’t until I was able to consistently dunk that I started to believe I could do it and never thought about it as I went up to dunk after that. Guess what, I didn’t get hung on the rim anymore, and I could dunk anytime I wanted after that.

That’s where this defense is at the moment. You don’t see Asante Samuel Jr. getting smoked out there often, do you? Do you know why? Because he’s a confident player and knows he has put the work in to be successful.

These guys didn’t all of a sudden lose all the talent they had coming out of high school, but a lack of confidence and inability for all 11 guys on defense to do their job is the problem right now.

Some of that is on the coaches no doubt, but the majority of it is on the players to do it themselves. It’s similar to a time I was helping a co-worker learn how to box jump at workouts. I knew they were athletic enough to do the box jump, but it didn’t matter what instruction I gave on technique. They were not going to be able to complete it until they believed they could do it.

These players are not used to handling success, and the challenge for the staff is how do they help them get there?