New Florida State coordinators Gus Malzahn and Tony White spoke with the media for the first time since spring practice began on Saturday afternoon. We have highlights of what they said about the first scrimmage, beginning with Malzahn, and have videos from both coordinators.
FSU offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn
Opening statement
Malzahn: First scrimmage down, I think 100 plays, 60 runs and 40 passes. That was kind of by design. All three quarterbacks played; matter of fact, it was pretty close to equal reps. Everybody on offense got a chance to play. We learned a lot about our guys individuals, which is good. Usually you learn more about scrimmages than any kind of practice, which was good. Had an opportunity to see how our guys responded to success see how they responded to adversity; that’s very important as you're building the offense together.
Overall, I like our guys attitude, I think they want to be coached, they want to be strained. We try to play fast. Our defense did some great stuff today. Its a challenge no doubt, Tony does a super job with that. Overall, there is a lot of things we can learn on film, that's what I told our guys when I brought them up, and we’ll have to improve in the areas of execution. The thing about offense it usually takes all 11 to execute, but there were times today where we had 8,9,01 guys executing and not one, but our guys will keep working to improve. I think overall there was a lot of good things, we need to improve, a lot of areas we need to improve, but there were some good things.
How have guys handled tempo?
Malzahn: It’s been good, there's nothing like when you have officials and they are administrating the game and all that, hand the ball to the official, that was the first time. We need to respond better at times, there were some good things. But for the most part, as a collective group, we have to play faster. And when you play fast you got to be mentally tough enough to execute.
How do you feel about game plan after six practices?
Malzahn: We have been slower to install, trying to develop a foundation. Trying to evaluate. I want it to be where our guys don’t have to think so much so we can evaluate them and so they can play football. Not a whole lot of scheming going on, its more of installing your plays and trying to get really, really good at the foundation. Hopefully the second part of spring, we’ll try to get a little fancier, but this is a base offense at this time.
How did backfield do today?
Malzahn: We gave them a lot of carries and that was by design too, we wanted to evaluate them. There were some good things... once I watch the film I’ll be able to tell you a lot more, but we protected the ball. I think really that was the number one thing with running backs, that first day you scrimmage you protect the football.
One-on-one wins for the receivers, how are they doing?
Malzahn: There was a couple of explosive plays, a couple plays where our DB’s did a really good job too. It’s really been that way all spring.
How did you like the play of the offensive line and the run game?
Malzahn: First of all, Luke (Petitbon) is doing an outstanding job identifying everything. He’s a veteran guy, played a lot of football. We’ve had some lineman move around, anytime you have to move linemen around it's kind of hard to get continuity. Hopefully, the rest of the spring, we’ll start getting our guys in spots and be able to develop that continuity. Luke has been off to ...
