Fresh Blood Should Yield A Seminole Renaissance in 2010

It’s not exactly news that as Florida State’s geriatric coaching staff entered the pudding-and-Matlock portions of their careers, the performance of the Seminoles waned badly despite the regular entry of NFL-level talent. Coaching is a natural scapegoat in these matters.

Jimbo Fisher has taken over the reigns in Tallahassee.

Even so, this anonymous NFL scout’s assessment of Florida State’s defense is damning:

FSU’s defense was easily the worst defense I’ve seen from a marquee program in the 12 years I’ve been doing this. If you squint, you’ll think you’re watching film from a Div.II team. The angles that were taken, the shoddy schemes, the miscommunications, I’ve seen footage from spring games that were more coherent

Yeesh. Anonymous NFL scout goes on to compare Dekoda Watson to a Norfolk State player and claim he is going to drop in the NFL draft because of Bobby Bowden’s very old boys club:

He has just as good measurables as other 4-3 LBs in this class, but he’s severely behind in the technique part of it. It’s so apparent for all of FSU’s players that I have to pin it on coaching. If they ended up going to a program like UF or UGA, they would’ve gotten proper coaching and probably both be solid 1st rounders.

Florida State blog Tomahawk Nation, the source of the quotes, naturally believes this presages a major leap forward for a defense that imploded so spectacularly that it actually lost a game in which Christian Ponder was 26 of 36 for 359 yards, five touchdowns, and no interceptions. Florida State was 108th in rushing defense, 110th in pass efficiency defense, and 108th in total defense, which is a little miracle of incompetence when you’re situated in an area of the country where you can’t throw a rock without enraging a 240-pound rhinoceros of a high schooler.

How many standard deviations below the mean were Chuck Amato and the rest of FSU’s position coaches last year? 40? With a healthy Ponder returning, even half-decent coaching should see Florida State on the right end of a lot of high scoring games. With the ACC as wide open as it always is, Jimbo Fisher could be in line for a quick return to the top of the conference Florida State dominated from its inception until the point where Bowden started falling off. Maybe two years is a more realistic timeframe for the defense to round into shape, but in any case it’s just a matter of time before enormous beasts named Nigel and half-competent coaching combine to stake Florida State’s claim in a mediocre ACC.
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