Is the Florida State Seminoles Defense Too Young for a Cougar Hunt?

“I don’t believe it!  We just knocked out a cougar with a K-Mart blow gun!”

--The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys

Saturday night may very well feel just like that if the Florida State Seminoles can knock out the BYU Cougars with a defense that's been as reliable as a dime store toy.

A 2010 football junkie journal entry: the Seminoles' D still stinks.

In the wake of last Saturday’s throttling in Norman, some ugly, mediocre numbers are still giving FSU fans indigestion.  So eat your chewable antacid tablets now, and continue reading at your own peril.

Through two games, the Seminoles D has given up 26 first downs and 617 yards through the air, has allowed 7-for-9 in red zone scoring (four of them touchdowns), and is allowing its opponent to hold the ball for 35 minutes per game.

Whether the coaching staff is spitting out one heck of a halftime speech or opponents are letting off the gas pedal, the D is allowing an average of nearly 19 points in the first half of games; but only eight in the second.

Why are opponents chewing up large chunks of yards?  Two of the top four tacklers on the defense are cornerbacks (sophomore corner Greg Reid with 14 and redshirt freshman corner Xavier Rhodes with 11); the other two are linebackers (junior Nigel Bradham with 14 and redshirt senior Mister Alexander with 10). 

No D-linemen have registered double digits in tackles.  That means that more often than not, tackles are being made down field and not at the line of scrimmage.

That is a telling statistic.  Despite Oklahoma and Samford both throwing the ball a lot, many of their passes were bubble screens and dump-offs right at the line of scrimmage which were turned into substantial gains.

Additionally, Brandon Jenkins (sophomore defensive end) has nine tackles, Kendall Smith (senior linebacker) has eight, Everette Dawkins (redshirt sophomore D-lineman), Markus White (senior defensive end) and Anthony McLoud (redshirt sophomore defensive tackle) all have seven tackles. 

Dawkins, Jenkins, Demonte McAllister (redshirt freshman D-lineman), Christian Jones (freshman linebacker), and Bjoern Werner (freshman defensive end) all have sacks.

JuCo transfer Mike Harris (junior cornerback) has the teams’ only interception, and along with the spring’s most improved player Terrance Parks (junior safety) has five tackles.

Other underclassmen on the tackle stat sheet are linebackers Jeff Luc (freshman) and Vince Williams (redshirt sophomore) with seven, Lamarcus Joyner (freshman corner) with six, and Telvin Smith (freshman linebacker) and Jacobbi McDaniel (sophomore defensive tackle) registered four.

There are only 13 seniors on FSU’s 2010 roster, and only seven of them got any substantial playing time on either side of the ball through two games.

None of these numbers are staggering; most of them are pedestrian.  But one thing is for certain: the bloodline of this defense is youth. 

The good news is that most of these players are highly touted and were heavily sought after during their respective high school recruiting periods.  The bad news here is that the Seminoles are leaning heavily on a crew of true freshman, with a spattering of second-year guys.

With youth comes nerves, over-confidence, anxiety away from home, manic highs and lows, inconsistency, naïve mistakes, and over-pursuit.

So what can we expect from this team on Saturday when they host BYU (Saturday, 3:30 PM on ESPNU)?  The unexpected…seriously.  Defensively, they could come out and completely stifle the Cougars for 60 minutes—wouldn’t surprise me. 

They could also allow another three-touchdown second quarter.

On offense, Christian Ponder could shake off the abnormally weak game he had in Norman, OK and light the BYU defense up early and often with both his arm and his legs. 

He’ll need help from the rest of his offense, though; an offense that largely got muscled around by the Sooners’ secondary.

If you’re a Noles fan you just have to hope that BYU doesn’t come out and try to confuse this young crew of kids, because the Sooners did it all day.  Mark Stoops would be wise to scale the playbook back a bit, and as I and many other writers have said, find something defensively that the team does well, and practice it to perfection. 

This young unit needs the consistent reps, and hopefully another week’s worth will be enough to propel FSU to a victory Saturday afternoon.