Florida State Seminoles Scouting Report
Head Coach: @Wpotty
Week 8 - Year 3
March 3rd, 2015
Florida State 45
Nebraska 52
Offense
First and foremost, this is an absurdly talented team. Felt like I was chasing around NFL Pro Bowlers the entire game. The speed he has at receiver is just silly. He has 99 and 98 speed receivers. They are little guys but they run past everyone so it doesn't really matter. Feeds them often with verts and slants. The other two receivers are bigger possession types and he has two very good TEs as well. He also has two mid-90s overall HBs and Jameis Winston, just in case you forgot about him. I cannot imagine there is a defense in the conference athletic enough to run with those receivers so you better give corners some help.
He ran an amazing 66 plays in this game, throwing 40 times and running 26 times. The pass game is not complicated but because of the talent on the field, it is deadly. He threw for 423 yards and 6 TD, 206 of those yards came to Wilson, the tiny little dude with 98 speed. He is almost uncoverable. His release rating is not good so if you have a physical CB who can press, that's your best bet but you better be damn sure he'll be successful or Wilson will be 20 yards past you before you even know what happened.
He runs A LOT of unbalanced formations. Of his 66 plays, I bet he was in some variation of 3x1 Trips for 50 of those plays. The three key formations to be aware of are Gun Y Trips Offset, Gun Bunch and Gun Trips. He'll go Pistol Flexbone Slot and Gun Split Offset/Split Y Offset here and there but it is the trips stuff you have to focus on, especially Gun Bunch.
I would say his go-to formation in "need to convert/need to score" situations was Gun Bunch. It is so hard to defend because of the speed. If you focus too much on the bunch side, he can throw backside slant/vert to a 98 speed receiver and get an easy completion. If you don't put enough focus on the Bunch side, he can throw to any one of those three guys with success.
Biggest play is Gun Bunch Seattle. That Seattle concept is his go-to and it is just so hard to defense. He throws to the middle receiver of the three more often than not but again, the second you shift the defense towards the Bunch, he'll throw a backside slant/vert and burn you. He roasted me a handful of times that way to the point where I just gave up on over-shifting towards the Bunch and just tried manually covering it and guessing. He'll run Drive and Spot out of Bunch some, but it's
Seattle that you need to be ready for.
A significant part of his offense is backside throws to the solo receiver opposite of trips. I cannot stress that enough. If you leave your backside corner on an island, you are going to get torched. There were plays I even gave my backside corner help and I got torched. The speed at backside receiver is just too much to handle with man coverage unless you can guarantee your press will hold. I would go so far as saying the biggest threat in his offense is that backside receiver. You just cannot leave a corner on an island backside, if you do, he will blow your doors off. If given the choice between him nickel and diming you to death with quick throws to the trips side or giving up big plays to the backside receiver, just let him nickel and dime you. More chances for mistakes, turnovers or drops that way.
If you're a 425/335 team, you need to be ready to have an answer for trips because he spends most of the game in some variation of trips. I got caught with a safety on a slot receiver or some other mismatch quite a bit. I ended up switching to base nickel for most of the second half just to account for the alignment issues.
I'd also recommend a lot of zone. You'll give up some underneath stuff, but it is better that than the alternative. I spent the entire game in Cover 2, Cover 3 or Cover 6 Zone and STILL got roasted deep multiple times. Mixing up aggressive and conservative zone defense would be helpful.
His favorite run play is Trap out of Gun Y Trips Offset. He'll go to it early and often, especially via up-tempo. Honestly, just let him have it. If you don't dedicate 7 or 8 to defending the pass it really isn't going to matter. Let him run the ball. He'll gash you with Trap (his HB had 7.3 ypc) but just let him have it. He does go Gun Split Offset/Split Y Offset here and there, usually to run Triple Option, but I used aggressive option defense to prevent the option part of it. I would definitely recommend aggressive option defense, you'll have enough to worry about with him throwing the ball, not letting Winston keep on option is one less thing you need to mess with.
He doesn't really force passes, although he did get away with a handful of dropped INTs thrown right at my safeties. That was more a factor of a disguised coverage than a misread, his guys were running wide open the majority of the game.
He goes hurry-up/no-huddle here and there and does a good job of varying tempo. If he catches you in bad personnel or a bad coaching adjustment, he'll attack it with tempo.
Defense
Base 4-3 defense, user controlling the impact defensive tackle the majority of the game. He is very, VERY good at user controlling the DT and had great success penetrating the interior of my offensive line, but it was at the expense of making the tackle. He missed quite a few tackles in the backfield which led to big plays. Spin moves were very effective for me trying to avoid the penetration.
He uses a lot of late shifts and movement on defense to try and disguise coverages and blitzes. I would say the late shifts hurt him more than they helped though. He ended up with some players out of position a few times and it cost him, either because of lost leverage in run support or safety out of position to help in pass coverage. I would HIGHLY recommend varying your snap count and throwing in some hard counts. He gets a little antsy with the user DT and if you wait him out, he'll give away his late shifts/show blitz allowing you to get a clear pre-snap read. If you rush the snap, the late shifts will mess with your run and pass reads.
Felt like he was in man coverage most of the game, but that was likely a factor of my run game. Against a more pass heavy team, I imagine he will be in zone. He was exclusively zone in 3rd & Long situations, but it hurt him because I was able to throw some slants underneath and get some YAC yards to pick up the first. Even though he shows two high safeties often, he'll shift down out of it quite a bit so don't assume it is Cover 2.
I believe he used aggressive strip ball in this game. He ripped one ball out for an early turnover and had quite a few strip ball animations throughout the game. There isn't much you can do about it, just be aware of it.
He started in conservative option defense early in the game, but got burned a couple times because of it so he switched up to aggressive option defense later on. He got burned because of that as well though. Once I figured out how he was attacking with the user DT, I was able to adjust my run game accordingly with a lot of down blocks on that guy. Power/Strong Power and Counter were very useful in this game.
Special Teams
His kicker crushed a field goal from 61 yards with a 5mph wind at his back. It would have been good from 63+. Despite the FG distance, his kickoffs seldom reached the back of the endzone and he allowed two long returns including a 107 yard touchdown because of it. I don't know if that was on purpose, the wind or just mis-hit kicks but I would force him to make a tackle on the return. You may start with a short field here and there but the chances of a big play are also high if your returner is fairly athletic.
Overall
The bottom line here is that this is an absurdly talented team with a user who knows exactly how to get the most out of that talent. If he could coax even a couple stops out of his defense, he'll win just about any game.
@