Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Five minutes past the hour. It is the third hour
of the Morning Show with Preston Scott. Great to be
with you this morning. Obviously we're paying attention now. It's
a whole new world because of the likelihood of a
storm impacting our region by the end of the week.
But that is something we will certainly be talking about
with increasing frequency throughout the coming days. But now we
(00:30):
get to reflect on something else, ladies and gentlemen. FS
you want a football game and to talk about it
as irishefellowar chand dot com. It sounds so odd to
put it that way, but it really was a big
deal that they found a way to win.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah, it's where we're at right now, Preston a long time,
it's Florida stake. Gotta win, so yeah, you gotta. I
don't know, I know some people are not enjoying it,
but I feel like you probably should enjoy a win
after the first few weeks.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
All right, Before get into the specifics now, I'm just curious,
do you guys drive over to SMU this week? Are
you flying over? How you covering the game?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Well, I'm supposed to be flying and so we'll see
how the weather goes one of our other guys of
Matt is gonna be flying also, although he's from Dallas.
So he's told me if the storm looks like it's
gonna be bad, he's gonna drive Thursday morning if he
can beat it. So he's fine with driving. I'm only
going if I can fly.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yeah, if you're driving, I would absolutely leave in the
morning on Thursday, because after that you might not get
across I ten. But anyway, all right, so they've got SMU.
We'll get to that in a couple of segments. What's
your what's your big picture of the win on Saturday night?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
You know? To me, you know, and I've had a
lot of conversations with frustrated FSU fans. My feeling is, look, man,
this team was bad on both sides of the ball.
The only thing that's been good for the first month
of the season really was special teams, and you know,
specifically Mastermano with Fitzgerald. And so the defense showed some life.
I felt like against Memphis started playing a little bit better,
(02:10):
and then this game, I thought you saw a lot
more from the defense, especially the defensive line. That's the
defensive line we've all kind of been expecting to see
all season, so that's a positive. The offense is still,
you know, kind of a train wreck. That had two
nice drives, but other than that, it was it was
really rough. So you know, to me, it's it's incremental growth,
it's some improvement, and it's a win, which could help
(02:31):
these guys because listen, I mean and you played sports
and covered sports, and you know, winning changes just the
mindset of the whole program. So I think it opens
up the opportunity for more players to improve because they're
in a better frame of mind.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
What can you tell us about Joshua Farmer because he
made a comment in the post game that I wasn't
sure exactly because I didn't catch the whole thing talking
about removing some cast that allowed him to play. Because
I'll tell you what, he's different in the last two games,
and as a result, that defense is different.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Completely different, one hundred percent. Yeah. So, he he had
an injury. The reason he didn't play in the bowl
game last year is he had a hand injury, hand
or wrist, and so he had surgery before the bowl
game so that he could hopefully get back for spring practice.
But it must have been pretty severe because he missed
almost all of the spring practice, and then even in
the preseason camp he was still a little bit limited.
(03:24):
And then when he played, he had like a brace
or something on his wrist to protect his wrists or
his hand, and he played with that for the first
two games. I think the plan was to play aff
season with it, and after the second game he just
felt like it was really kind of limiting what he
could do in terms of grabbing offensive lineman and so
he took it off. And in these last two games,
(03:46):
as you said, I mean he had he had five
total tackles and no tackles for lost in the first
two games this season. In the last two games, I
think he's had about nine total tackles but seven tackles
for lost. Six or seven tackles we lost in the
life to games, and a lot of times he opens
things up, you know, a lot of Patrick Payton had
three sacks in that game Saturday, but at least one
(04:07):
or two of them were sprung by Josh Farmer, putting
pressure and forcing the quarterback into Peyton.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
You know, you and I have talked about what seems
to be a little bit of a lacking in leadership
on the football team among the players a little internal fire.
One of my sons said over the weekend that Josh
Farmer making that statement saying I'm playing without the cast,
We're going to get after it, that that's the first
spark of leadership be seen. It seems that that might
(04:35):
be some there might be some truth to that.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yeah, I think that's a good perception, there's no question.
I mean one of the things that I think that
you know, when people talk about leadership, I think, again,
what everybody visualizes somebody standing at the room like in
a movie in the locker room and getting everybody fired up,
But so many other times it's really just about who's
are guys willing to put their body on the line,
or are guys willing to to really just kind of
(05:01):
sell out for the team. And if one or two
or three or five guys do that, and then it
becomes contagious. And I feel like that is I think
that's very perceptive, and you know, I think that that's
something It felt like this team, it seemed like this
team wasn't really kind of going over that line. But
maybe you're starting to see that.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Oh look a bike with one of those bells and
a radio, just like the seventies. I yeah, I traveled
with a radio taped to my bike. This is the
Morning Show with Preston Scott.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Back with Irashafellowarchant dot Com. I'm gonna do what I loathe.
I'm gonna play armchair quarterback for a second. I can't
get my brain around the fact that at this point,
here's what I've arrived at with our offense. We're asking
a kid who is a prototypical pro style quarterback who
(06:02):
cannot run, to run an option offense in the running game,
and we have no option. Why didn't Mike change his
offense up either pare it down? But there's he doesn't
he can't run. Why are we faking a dive and
hold pulling it out when he can't do it.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
You're you're not buying, you're not biting on the quarterback keep.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Well, let's put it this way. It's not worked yet,
and it's four games in. It's just but I mean,
I look at the pros. They don't with the exception
of the athletic quarterbacks that might have pulled occasionally pulled
the thing out and go. The fact is they don't
do that. And that's who DJ is. He's a drop
back thrower who has accuracy issues but can throw the ball.
(06:49):
Why aren't we just running a pro style offense.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
I think they're I think they're kind of complacement, rocking
a hard place in the sense that you don't you know. Again,
the offensive line, I thought showed more life and run
blocking this week, so that was a positive, you know,
but this is not a receiving corps that's very dynamic
and you know, and I think that the offensive line
(07:14):
has not been very good either, and so I feel
like he's doing whatever he can to try to give
the receivers more time to get open. So if you
if you do run the play action or you know,
whether it's a zone read or it's just just a
normal play action, I'm guessing he's thinking that at least
put some of the linebackers maybe safeties in conflict, and
that'll help these wide receivers get up. And that's my theory.
(07:35):
I can ask him. But at the end of the day,
I just think if you're if you're an offensive football
team with a quarterback who's not very good and DJ
has not played anything close to very good, and you
don't have very talented receivers, I just think passing is
going to be difficult, so you can rearrange the chairs
on the Titanic. I don't know how much better it's
going to be. That's why I think leaning more into
(07:56):
the running game, which they did effectively early this game.
For most of the first half, they ran the ball well,
they just didn't perform well when they got towards the
red zone. You know, I think that's going to be
the only real ticket for this offense.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Well, i'll tell you what. I feel like you need
to give a medal of honor to Jakai Douglass because
he's just a gamer. He just finds a way to
get open and make tough catches when most guys don't
want to. But I don't know, he doesn't seem like
he's going to change quarterbacks, So it seems as though
he owes it to DJ. If that's the case, to
(08:31):
not put him in a position where everybody on the
defensive side of the ball knows he's not pulling and
running and if he does, we'll catch up with him.
I mean, you know a defensive tackle can run him down.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Yeah, no question. And that's why you know, myself and
I think a lot of people would like to see
broccoln and get a chance, not even not to say
that he's a better overall quarterback than where DJ is
right now. Rock still a redshirt freshman, but he does
have athletic ability, he does have a desire to run,
and he's going to look to you know, he's going
to look to make plays with his legs. So I
(09:05):
think with everything FS She's facing, he still gives them
a great chance to win. If Florida State hadn't gotten
that early lead and it kind of felt like they
were POSI control of the game early on, I wonder
if you would have gone to broccoln at least see
what it looks like. But then once you have a
slim lead, I think you probably don't want to take
a chance that maybe he did something to cost it.
(09:25):
So I still think there's a chance brocclyn gets into
one of these games and we'll see what it looks
like if he does.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Twenty one minutes past the hour the Morning Show with
Preston's got talking a little FSU football and joining us
Iris Chaffel from Warchan dot com, Ira, your colleague Corey
Clark wrote, I thought a really fascinating piece on the
offensive line and just taking more of a I guess,
thirty thousand foot view of it and going back and
looking at some numbers, it seemed to point out that
(10:00):
short of Jordan Travis being the incredible athlete he was
running the football, the offensive line and dodging rushes when
he's throwing has been weak for years now improved under
Alex Adkins. But what's your takeaway from that piece and
what points do you think he made that are valid?
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Yeah, you know, he and I have been talking about
this for the last couple of weeks because one of
the things we're trying to figure out is again, you know,
you know, because the premise he had earlier in the
year was, you know, does Mike Norvel need Jordan Travis?
And my pushback on that is, go look back at
Mike Norvel's offenses at Arizona State and at Memphis. They
had tremendous offenses top ten in the country practically every
(10:42):
year when he was in Memphis, and so it's not
just about Jordan Travis. But then we started kind of
looking at Alex Akin's track record as the offensive line
coach and honestly, before he came to Florida, State, he
had never been at this level. He'd been at a
Group of five level, and even when he was there,
he had really mobile quarterbacks that obviously can help your
offensive line. And for most of the time he's been
a Florida State at Jordan Travis, who is one of
(11:04):
the most dynamic, mobile quarterbacks you'll ever come across. So
you know, now you start asking yourself, Okay, well does
Alex Atkins can he build an offensive line that helps
a more stationary quarterback, which, as you said earlier, is
what dj Ue Unglea is and maybe that clouded their
perceptions of what this team could be. So again, like
(11:25):
this is you know, a lot of times you can
just make rash judgments and decisions based on one piece
of evidence. I think what we're right now is we're
just kind of collecting all the data and looking at Okay,
maybe this is the problem. And the reality is, you know,
if you haven't coached at the highest level of college football,
maybe you don't realize exactly what you need from those
(11:47):
offensive linemen, and that could color some of the recruiting
decisions they made. So again, I don't think we're ready
to say that Alex Akins is clearly the problem. But
without a mobile quarterback, they have not had any success.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Well, this weekend, SMU is on the schedule, and a
lot of people are going to overlook SMU, but they
just put sixty six on TCU. If I'm not mistaken,
on the road, and I don't see Florida State beating
them in an offensive showdown. So in your mind, what
does this game come down to?
Speaker 2 (12:22):
You know, to me, I'm hanging everything on this defense.
You know, I thought the way they played in that
game was big, and I think that's been in there.
You know, this is a team that coming into the
season we thought it would be the defense would be
the strength of this team, and then the running game
on offense, those you know, two things showed improvement. That
wasn't It wasn't constant with the running game, but we
(12:43):
saw some signs where they really ran the ball a
lot better. And then defensively, you know, that was the
best game of the season. It's really two good games
in a row for the defense. And you know that
smusup a lot of points, but they have not played
a lot of great defenses, and you know, I think
TCU turned the ball over some So this is the game.
I think Florida State just has to play a clean
the past to victory for Florida State to me is
(13:06):
you know the defense team that keep them in it,
not make any mistakes and just try to keep it close.
But but uh, you know, they're gonna be an underdog
on the road, and they have not prepared well as
favorites so far, so it's hard to say that they're
definitely gonna go get a win on the road.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
That leads me to my next question. I think coach
Norvell is making mistakes, at least in this last game.
Not trotting Ryan Fitzgerald out there, who might be the
best kicker in the country. He's going to have to
take points and not go for it with a questionable
offense when he can take a shot out of field goal.
It doesn't he.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
I mean, I agree with you. I think he you know, listen,
I think one of his strengths is a person as
a coach is he is. He has so much belief.
I agree, and but but I think it's become a
problem because going for two the week before, I thought
it was a mistake for the same reason. Uh, just
go ahead and get the one point and then in
this situation, and yeah, they were. It was third and
you know, medium to long around the thirty five yard
(14:05):
thirty eight yard line. I thought the mistake was not
trying to get a few yards on third down to
set up the field goal. Instead they threw it. It
was a complete and then that it would be a
fifty five yard field goal. He decided to go for it,
which it felt like there was slim chance of that happening,
and there was, so Yeah, I think playing for more
field goals might be the answer, because, like you said,
you have one of the best kickers in the country,
(14:26):
maybe the best.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
When it's all said and done, what do you think
is going to happen Saturday night at eight o'clock in
uh it's Southern Methodists.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I haven't spent a ton of time breaking down everything
about SMU, but right now, it would be hard to
pick Florida State just because the offense is played. The
offense is plays so poorly at home it's hard to
imagine they're going to play well on the road. So
you know, I think Florida State's going to have a
tough time scoring more than fourteen points again. And if
that's the case, you know, I'd probably pick SMU to
win the game.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Well, bless his heart, DJ's not going to get booed
when he comes out of the tunnel. Let SMU though, Ira, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
He might get seered over there.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Oh I feel so bad for that kid, I really do.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Yeah, it's definitely not what he signed up for and
it's definitely not what but at the same time, you know,
he's not playing well. And even his father, who's very
active on social media, was on social media this weekend
accepting that that. Listen, you know, you can't question his heart, no,
the character, but he's but he's certainly not playing well
and they all have to get a lot better.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Iras always, thank you. We'll talk again next week.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Thanks pressing to take care, all
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Right, Iras Chafelle with us from war chant dot com
twenty seven past the hour