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Seminoles' last gasp at reason for loss: lack of defensive depth

FSU is no longer able to rotate defensive personnel like in previous seasons.

By BRIAN LANDMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published October 11, 2000

TALLAHASSEE -- Florida State defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews could see the potential pitfall for weeks -- not that he thought he could do much to avoid it.

With the gap between his starters and backups cavernous, especially in the secondary and at linebacker, Andrews bucked his tradition of shuttling players in and out of games.

That strategy had allowed his starters to stay fresh, provided reserves with needed experience and kept the Seminoles ahead of most of their opponents.

But

"Somewhere along the line you're going to be without some of them," he said somberly last week, "and if you're not letting somebody else see if they can play when the game's still on the line, it's going to bite you somewhere down the line."

FSU got bitten a few days later.

Miami needed 51 seconds and seven plays to breeze 68 yards for the winning touchdown in the waning moments to upset then No. 1-ranked FSU 27-24 Saturday at the Orange Bowl.

"It's been a problem all year. There's too many places where our backups can't go in and play at the level they've got to for us to be successful," Andrews said. "So our guys wore down."

Senior cornerback Tay Cody, junior safety Chris Hope and senior linebacker Brian Allen played all 77 Miami snaps. Senior safety Derrick Gibson got a break; he had to be out there only for 75. Senior cornerback Clevan Thomas, senior linebacker Tommy Polley and junior middle linebacker Bradley Jennings had virtually no rest, either.

"It was a big game," Cody said. "You can't look for excuses. We knew fatigue was going to be a factor, but that's adversity. You have to learn how to fight it and play when you're tired."

It didn't help that the offense not only failed to take advantage of numerous scoring chances but controlled the ball for nearly four minutes less than in the first five games.

It also didn't help that the temperature (84 degrees) and humidity (76 percent) turned the Orange Bowl into a 72,000-seat sauna. Allen later said he hadn't "worked in a tobacco field hotter" than that field.

Allen, the defensive captain, said every returning starter realized depth would be an issue, especially when highly touted linebacking prospects Eric Moore (Pahokee), Chad Mascoe (Kissimmee Osceola) and Nathaniel Hardage (Sylvester Worth County, Ga.) didn't qualify.

More problems occurred in the fall. Redshirt sophomore cornerback Malcolm Tatum sustained a hairline fracture in his lower back and might not return this year. True freshman Bryant McFadden, hailed as perhaps the nation's top prep cornerback out of Hollywood McArthur, sustained a similar injury in two-a-days; although he is cleared for contact now, he likely will seek a medical redshirt.

"We knew coming into this year, as a secondary, as a linebacking corps, we were going to have to play a lot of football, so it was up to us to bust our behinds this summer to get in shape," said Allen, who added that he didn't feel tired until the last drive but after a Miami timeout, felt "just as energetic as I did at the beginning of the ballgame."

You could have fooled his teammates.

"I could tell it on their faces, they were tired," said freshman linebacker Kendyll Pope, who played three series against Miami, far less than he had been averaging.

"A lot of times you don't recognize the fatigue until you see the results," coach Bobby Bowden said. "I don't know if any of our coaches were thinking fatigue at the time. I didn't think about it until I saw the film, and I'm thinking, "Man. We're not as quick as we were.' But they weren't, either."

FSU ran out of time to put that to the test.

Beginning Saturday against Duke and on Oct. 21 against struggling Virginia, Florida State could have the opportunity to play some of its younger players: redshirt freshman cornerbacks Stanford Samuels and Rufus Brown, redshirt junior safety Abdual Howard, true freshman safety B.J. Ward, true freshman safety Yohance Buchanan and perhaps true freshman linebacker Devaughn Darling.

"If we want to give up points, we will," Andrews said.

Andrews publicly challenged the younger players to show more on the practice field.

"If you can't do it out there, we ain't going to trust you out on the field on Saturday," Andrews said. "We're not getting the job done. We're not bringing them along as fast as we need to. We've got to do a better job of coaching, and we've got to have a better response out of the players."

Brown, who filled in for Thomas for one play Saturday, said he is working hard on some "little things," such as proper alignment and just being "smarter."

Being smarter comes from experience.

"A lot of our guys just aren't ready to play right now," Gibson said. "They have potential, but they're just not ready to play. I feel coach Andrews doesn't have confidence in them. When I was coming up, he had confidence in me. He wasn't afraid to put me in there. I feel like if he puts them out there, he'd be holding his breath with each play."

So the starters aren't catching theirs.

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