The first few practices of Florida State's spring practice were a sort of feeling-out period for the Seminoles.
New coaches on both sides of the ball. Over 30 new players enrolled. New schemes to learn both on offense and defense.
Saturday's sixth practice of FSU's spring camp also served as the first scrimmage of spring. With that, it was a bit of a ramp-up in intensity and expectations for all involved as the team scrimmaged inside the indoor practice facility Saturday morning.
"I learned more today than probably the first five practices," FSU offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn said after the scrimmage was wrapped up. "That's normal in scrimmages. That's real football, which is exciting."
This spring has been different than the last few with Malzahn installing his new offense and new terminology while FSU defensive coordinator Tony White also installs his multiple 3-3-5 defense.
Saturday marked the first time that the players were alone on the field and the coaches (with the exception of head coach Mike Norvell) were on the sideline, getting a chance to see how they operate with less direct supervision.
"I think the biggest thing today was giving them a chance to get the coaches out of the way and everybody out on the field and just let them operate," White said. "For me being here as well is how do we operate on the sidelines? What does a headset sound like? What do the substitutions feel like? Are we correcting things on the sideline? How are we as coaches on game day right now? This was my first preview.
"There's gonna be a lot of things that are gonna get corrected. But again, we've got some really good coaches. It was fun to go out there with the guys and let them run around. There was plays made, there were plays missed, and so we're just gonna watch the tape, get the schematics right, but more importantly, making sure we operate the right way. Substitutions, things like that, especially with our guys going warp speed, got to fix things like that, the headset stuff. But otherwise, it was good to get out there and free flow a little bit."
Much of Malzahn's offense wants to be based in tempo and speed to create confusion on the other side of the ball. It's been a bit of an acclimation for the offense to get used to that this spring and has forced the defense to practice with a certain tempo that has proven to be a real challenge.
"We need to respond better at times," Malzahn said. "There were some good things, but for the most part, as a collective group we have to play faster. When you play faster, you have to be tough enough to execute."
Norvell added: "We want to continue to push our tempo. We want to continue to push pace. We had some ACC officials here so we were able to have some some teachable moments of just making sure that we're putting ourselves in the best position not to allow drives to extend, or not to put ourselves in even more challenging situations due to negatives."
Malzahn's focus has been so much on trying to get the offense up to the speed he's looking for that he's kept a more base install of the offense through the first two weeks.
"We have been slower to install, trying to develop a foundation and then trying to evaluate. I just want it to be where our guys don't have to think so much that they ...
