I received an interesting idea from an FSU alum and avid reader of the site a couple of weeks back. He asked to explain the major differences between this year’s team and last year’s team.
He noted that last year’s team had lots of folks saying positive things, and expectations were high, and there are folks who believe the team will be largely improved over last year, but he wanted me to focus more on the offensive line and QB perspective.
That was about two weeks ago, and I wanted to see a little more from fall camp before I gave an opinion. I think the two teams are very different for a variety of reasons. However, I’ll start with this one:
Proven Coordinators
Gus Malzahn and Tony White are significant upgrades over Alex Atkins and Adam Fuller. Frankly, it’s a light year’s gap between Malzahn and Atkins, and Malzahn bringing Herb Hand with him as a proven offensive line coach is part of that equation. The biggest issue last year on the field was that FSU couldn’t do anything whatsoever offensively.
They had no offensive identity, played soft, couldn’t execute anything, and were the main reason FSU lost 10 games. The FSU defense wasn’t perfect, but its stats got heavily influenced because of the offensive ineptness.
Malzhan consistently produces top 30 offenses, and Tony White consistently produces top 20 defenses. Will they hit those marks this season? They have a shot if they can stay healthy, but I’d nearly guarantee FSU will score 25 ppg on average and allow fewer than 25 ppg on average. If they hit those marks alone, it would be a significant improvement over last year.