Assistants spend long hours scouting their foes, as a peek inside an FSU session reveals.
By BRIAN LANDMAN
Published October 1, 2003
TALLAHASSEE - Florida State offensive coordinator Jeff Bowden abruptly sat up in his swivel chair, paused the video, aimed a laser pointer at the projection screen and circled an area.
"Y'all see that?" he asked excitedly during a Sept.22 video session.
On the play being shown, against Western Carolina, the Duke defense invitingly evacuated the middle of the field. Bowden replayed the sequence for the other offensive coaches: Daryl Dickey (quarterbacks), Billy Sexton (running backs), Jimmy Heggins (line) and John Lilly (tight ends).
"Y'all see that?" he repeated.
Don't look now, but a possible play call had been born.
Fast forward five days to Saturday night. On first and 10 from their 25 less than six minutes into the game, the Seminoles lined up with two split receivers, two running backs in the I formation and one tight end, Donnie Carter. The Blue Devils, though in a different alignment than shown on video, reacted the same way: A safety crept closer to the line to stop the run.
Off a play-action fake, quarterback Chris Rix found an uncovered Carter for a 50-yard gain, the longest pass to a Seminoles tight end in a decade. It set up FSU's second touchdown in the 56-7 rout.
"We figured they would respect the run with Greg Jones," Carter said. "We saw on film how they'd bring up safeties. ... I knew it was going to be wide open after watching film."
Breaking down an opponent's film, a blend of scientific analysis and educated guesswork, can be that telling. The time-consuming process is the foundation of a game plan, as a Times reporter learned when FSU offensive coaches provided a 90-minute peek behind the curtains.
The long table in the meeting room is littered with updated statistics, a Duke media guide, bios of Duke's starting 11 on defense, legal pads, pens, grease pens for board work and half-empty cans of soda.
By Monday afternoon of game week, the coaches had watched three Duke game videos and spent four or five hours studying "cut ups."
"Cut ups" are the computerized sorting of an opponent's defensive schemes against specific formations in various situations (down, distance, time of the game, red zone). Thanks to the meticulous work of FSU's video crew, coaches need only a click of the mouse to run through all available plays, from which they can deduce an opponent's tendencies.
"We're going to get single coverage here; they're not going to play two-deep," Dickey said after watching a "cut up" series.
"Bench is the call there," Bowden chimed in, referring to his preferred route to attack it.
"Whatever you want, we'll work it in. We just have to make the decision today so we can work on it," Dickey answered.
"We've got more stuff than we can run," Bowden said, studying a notepad with play possibilities then glancing at the grease board with yet more diagrams and terms.
Though the work seems tedious, the coaches are relaxed and even trade good-natured jokes. Bowden, at one point, shouts "Here's Lilly's touchdown." For years, Lilly has lobbied for a can't-miss big play for his players. But at FSU the ball rarely seems to come the tight end's way.
"They say that to mess with me," he said with a laugh.
That's not to suggest they're not serious about the task. They must be. So much is dictated by the prep work.
Two things continue to jump out about Duke's defense as the coaches work on Monday and Tuesday: The Blue Devils play a basic 4-3 defense, and they seldom blitz. Ben Odom, the graduate assistant who does video work for the offense, says of the 34 plays the opponents were in a shotgun, three-wide out formation, the Blue Devils blitzed just nine times.
But come game night, the Blue Devils lined up predominantly in a 3-4 - and blitzing was the norm.
"I don't remember a single down when they didn't blitz somebody," Bowden said. "Sometimes they blitzed one, sometimes they blitzed two, sometimes they blitzed three. That went on all night long. But I was amazed we were able to pick it up as good as we did."
The Seminoles' young line hadn't allowed a sack in their previous two games but Duke sacked Rix three times and had three more of Fabian Walker and Wyatt Sexton. Still, the prep work helped avert a major problem.
The Blue Devils had shown a little 3-4, mainly in long-yardage situations, and coaches incorporated that as a possibility into the plan.
"We walked through it, talked about it and showed them (the players) it on film so at least everybody would know where to go and it ended up, for the most part, they knew where to go," Heggins said. "Just in case."
The coaches also had studied last year's game against Duke, in which the Blue Devils gambled defensively by blitzing frequently. What if the past predicted the future?
"You can always get surprises, no doubt about that," Dickey said. "Everybody's going to have something (new) in their pocket, a way somebody is trying to attack you. You've just got to figure it out."
