Florida State football preview: Boston College comes to town

Ingram Smith but Elliot back again for another episode of the ncast here to do a preview episode this will be a fairly quick one uh the very rare Saturday morning preview episode so uh we're all adjusting our schedules here briefly because of the Monday game um like I said this will be real brief so off the top we will thank our friends at Madison social Township has the Dueling Pianos later today uh if you are a same day listener that we will remind you of Charlie Park never a better experience than going up there on game weekend um and if you're looking to do some last minute tailgate prep I would recommend our friends at Social kitchen uh Chad and his legendary team been fantastic from the ncast worked with Bud twice great people look forward to seeing Chad soon and uh if you've listen to this podcast we think of Matt Lewis and the Fantastic Team at congruity so uh congru hr.com is the website there great people who we would wholeheartedly recommend you use in moving forward all right Bud interesting feeling game that you're uh you know the last kind of game of college weekends uh opening you know for all intent and purposes opening weekend um to an extent kind of wish Florida state was playing in three and a half hours so we could just go ahead and and get game number two in front of us and begin the process of uh you know remembering our uh our nice times in Ireland outside of the game itself but uh yeah we were waiting till Monday night National Spotlight um lot to be lot to be learned about both teams but uh you know this Boston college team has some nice pieces but also um you know a lot that uh the game one will tell us it it's an island game man and uh whether or not you like that obviously uh if you play well you love the island games everybody's watching you everybody's talking about you but if you are not playing well then Island games are are not great so all right what to know about Boston College Jeff Halley left Boston College to go be the defensive coordinator of the Green Bay Packers so they brought in Bill O'Brien who was at Alabama and then went to um Ohio State and now he is the head coach of Boston College he PRI previously uh was with Houston of the NFL and did a great job until he became the general manager and then he I guess can't pick players but he's pretty good at coaching and then he also took over for Joe pno during the Penn State uh like Scandal they had up there uh so he captained that ship I I generally tend to think Bill O'Brien is probably a pretty good head coach and uh maybe not great at being like a Personnel guy and there is a difference obviously we've seen some NFL guys do that and some NFL guys not do that uh where do you want to start our offense our defense what what do we want yeah let's start with uh with our offense and their defense they have a couple known pieces along the defensive line that we'll talk about um you know it's just kind of cliche to think of Boston College and and expect that there's some you know Luke Keeley or something like that running around if there is it's a rather U you know inexperienced linebacker and core and we don't know who that uh you know it's fair I mean Luke heeley not to derail us is maybe the best Lineback I've seen in the last 20 years and and uh Boston College had a nice string of linebackers I don't know that they have anybody like that and uh a little bit of an inexperienced secondary as well so um strength along the line of scrimmage uh the was it horley and EO Roku uh at tackle and end respectively uh that you'll will probably catch your eye on uh on Monday night and let's start uh at that line of scrimmage and work our way back with their defense yeah so uh horley and and um your guess is good as mine how to pronounce that I think it's Asar Raku but it's easy e i r u a KU but I I I I have watched his Clips he's a good player he's on some of these uh some of these draft lists so um you will have some some real players up front to deal with uh and then at other times Boston College's defensive line last year was pretty poor uh now you know we were pretty happy with the offensive tackle play u between you know buyers and Washington upon the rewatch you know the guard play and the center play in this game against Georgia Tech left a little more to be desired obviously part of that was handling some of like the late blitzes that Georgia Tech brought so you know we'll have to see if Boston College watched the Georgia Tech game and of course they did but can they replicate do they want to replicate what Georgia Tech did I think the answer to that is well I don't know because this is a brand new coaching staff for Boston College and they have different Personnel than Georgia Tech does they're certainly a little bit less experienced in the back end than Georgia Tech was so we'll have to see how much they want to protect their secondary um Georgia Tech played a lot of like well they they would show two and then they would end up in in single high uh coverage and that is sort of disrespectful to Florida State's receivers however uh if you like money and you want to keep your your job as a defensive coordinator I would keep disrespecting fsu's receivers until they uh show that they should be respected so um last year their run defense was like legitimately terrible now Florida State game did not show that a ton but I think as we know that was a bit of an outlier game and the guys warmed up in masks so I I do like legitimately people are go it's an excuse like yeah do you warm up a mass normally or or do you think that could be an indication that like there's something going around like a bug going around with the team uh but you know um so inexperience at linebacker as well they had this kid Davon Crouch who played for him in the bowl game he he graded out pretty well on PFF we'll see if that's a continuation but like they might be okay there uh we just don't like look there's no rule that they're going to play amazing even though like George Tech played pretty well you played poorly at times Tech also just had a really nice game plan that I think out game planed you at times like how often does that actually happen you know we we'll see uh I am curious how you attack this okay do you try to like like if you get a good field if it's not raining have you checked weather on this yet I have not no I mean like tassy weather you know Monday it's GNA be hot right but like if you get a good field I do think this is a game where you definitely could um like you you you could attack downfield more you know than you did against georia Tech if they're going to give you those looks uh maybe it's a little more stable field and blah blah blah I'm not trying to make looks like you're good weatherwise on Monday at least according to a quick reference to the weather app yeah um look I think the idea that oh this team just gave you a blueprint is something that that gets used too frequently in week zero or week one it's Ball's not you know ball can be very complicated the way depending on how you want to look at it I think that's an oversimplification of things having said that I would be shocked if they did not you know try to make you establish a run game that at times against George Tech you struggled with so whether that's you know run blitzes or aggressive looks as to you're saying and and by I mean what would be deemed as disrespectful to wide receivers that are going to have to play at a level that you know make you not give them looks that can be deemed uh disrespectful from a you know number standpoint um I I think any team moving forward is going to make you try to break that mold uh from a number standpoint and then operate from there yeah teams breaking breaking down that Tech game are going to see man Florida state was actually kind of close on some of these runs you know and they're probably gonna say like okay they actually blocked that one up okay they blocked that one up okay so I mean if I'm BC I'm anticipating more heavy run because fla state was much closer to breaking out in the Run game than it was in the passing game how well does dju handle playing in his second start in this offense we had mentioned this in the offseason typically transfer quarterbacks are we have seen are playing much better when they are in year two of an offense we have a very limited sample on this so maybe that is a complete like BS stat and we'll find out in 10 years when we have an appropriate sample of of transfer data but like so far and it it logically follows that more time in an offense to be comfortable with it is better than less time so uh but you know what this will be DJ's second game and we will see how he plays with it how does Mike norell use the the headset communication to his Advantage you know assuming they have it for the whole game right like does he change what he's doing with DJ or do they feel like that was actually good operationally I'm not saying that it was you it was poor um it is pretty clear through about I don't know 2,000 College dropbacks you know that DJ's a guy who struggles a little bit when the picture changes and I don't think any quarterback is like yeah change the picture on me please but some adapt to it better and I would anticipate teams trying to continue to do that with him so uh maybe on the headset coms they will be a little bit better about like anticipating change can I talk this morning anticipating change right like maybe the reminder I was talking to Danny canel about this he's like you know when we were doing doing headset coms I always liked like it wasn't like hey throw it here it's like hey if they roll into this look remember you're hot here like that that that type of thing so I don't know man like there's a lot of newness to the game there's a lot of newness to the team I I don't know exactly what this team will do you got to get the ball in the hands of your Playmakers if I'm Mike I'm probably thinking man Lucas looked pretty electric out there on a couple of those touches and then we kind of went away from it now obviously he got just plowed on a blitz right so you kind of gotta make sure that he's in there at the right times I don't think it's a situation where team see Lucas in and they just decide to Blitz the formation you know BTF like there's certain looks and and against certain down distance where the defense just knows it's like hey this is Blitz formation if we get this we Blitz um to to force the opponent to show they have answers for it I don't know that it's quite that but I mean if I'm a DC watching watching L like just look at Lucas like he's probably not going to be a great Blitz pickup guy right everybody has strengths and weaknesses so I mean I would expect that you try to get the ball in hands of royell Toof Philly and Lucas we don't know how much 21 or 12 or 11 they're going to play or or or 10 or whatever um how much of that last week was a mirage that as far as the ability to execute out of different formation because that was pretty Stark when we put that graphic up there yeah I haven't been to practice I don't know this is not any inside information at all I would expect that you continue to see Cam Davis become a larger and larger part of this offense moving forward as well as far as the blitz pickup thing I will say that Florida state did produce a running back that was about 58 1885 pounds it was one of the best Blitz pickup running backs even in the NFL uh that worked on never you know pancaked anybody but he was just brilliant at taking out the feet of uh of many a uh a rusher so um it's possible it's definitely not easy at that size um but no I do I do think cam both as loer and as a uh you know Target um I would be surprised if his role in this office doesn't continue to grow as well I I agree with that um all right so particularly while you're while you're limited from a Personnel perspective at wide receiver till you're till you're full go there I do think you're going to continue to lean more and more on your backs so we will uh we will probably see just how good these transfer Corners they took are right they they took a one from Georgia State they took one from Ohio State they took another kid from Ohio State uh I don't see a lot of them necessarily in the starting lineup what does that mean right if you take a bunch of transfers at one position generally I read into that and I say okay you don't think your position is very good that thus you took three uh transfers and part of that might have just been for depth they lost a couple uh you know Corners last year who did not play a whole lot so maybe they just needed some depth but maybe not right and we like maybe these Corners are good maybe they're not I I know that's not really precise but it's a new coaching staff with a a decently turned over roster in week one and they didn't play a week zero game and you did um I will say typically uh teams coming off a week Zero game when they're playing an opponent that has not played yet yet it's not like something where you should just go beded automatically but it's not a winning play like typically the team that has not played yet has the edge because they have film on you and you don't have film on them historically now we will see how this works out you know for this game but I I do think that's important like like you don't really know exactly what Boston College is going to run uh to me the kind of the more interesting side is the other side of the ball if if you want to go there so they bring in Grayson James quarterback from FIU but it's gonna be castalanos Bill OB Brien is not a guy who historically has embraced QB Run game stuff he is more of a NFL style dropback passer he he was behind a lot of what B was doing with Bryce young uh granted castalano is miles from Bryce young except maybe in stature although he's certainly thicker than Bryce was and Florida State fans are very familiar with with Thomas castalano because they saw him last year and he he really kind of tore him up at times although you did have a 3110 lead with like 17 minutes left and then you know the game kind of fell apart how much QB run stuff does Boston College do in this game my guess here is because they watch the Georgia Tech film a lot m right I don't know if that's actually what they wanted to do I don't know what they installed during fall Camp my guess here is that they probably tried to uh limit castalano's running in fact Bill O'Brien was on the ACC Network show with David hail and Andrea and uh and he had said yeah we definitely don't need to be running the quarterback 195 times paraphrasing but like it was pretty clear that they were going to throw the ball more and I was like I don't know I mean Florida State and Georgia recruited this kid as a running back like his best trait is is the legs I'm not saying he can't throw he clearly can throw some me but he also threw for 15 touchdowns and 14 picks so that's not not amazing um so if you're if you're Adam Fuller you don't really know what you're gonna get right like I'm sure you're familiar with Bill O'Brien but dude you don't know what they're going how they gonna mesh castalano's skills with what O'Brien likes to call like that that's kind of the first fact fasinating aspect of this side of the ball for me it's interesting I do uh look forward to us doing a week four or five ncast and look back and see have a better sample size as to what some of these clock implications mean um nationally and how they're changing the way that some offenses um go about their way I mean if we're really going to live in a world in which college football games you're you're going to get 56 57 snaps on offense and that's it's a pretty significant departure uh now we have the game this weekend and as Florida State fans we have last weekend there were some things that are unique about that as far as the number of completions you had you really didn't have many incomplete passes etc etc but I do think that's going to impact uh a lot of different aspects of offense and particularly can impact teams um and how they choose to run the quarterback you know if you're only going to have so many more players or if you're going only have so fewer then um I I could see in a world where maybe maybe you lean on quarterback run or you feel comfortable leaning on your quarterback a little bit more so uh again that's something we're going to need a larger data uh point on to look at and uh and Boston College is certainly a different offense with what they have and you're right they have a special player but a special player who if he was playing at a a top 15 or top 20 program is not playing this quarter is not playing this position he's an offensive skill player uh it's not a perfect comparison but it would almost be as if Lawrence to Philly had a had a really good arm but you know if you're going to play Florida State or or Georgia or something like that then yeah you're probably not going to be a quarterback so castalano is an interesting piece uh I'm curious to see how a mine like Bill O'Brien tries to incorporate him into an offense they do have some interesting receivers uh so Lewis Bond who was their their pretty uh you know pretty heavily targeted guy last year 80 targets 52 catch es he's back they took Duran Bradley from Texas Tech big body guy 65 220 uh and they also took Jaden McGowen from vanderbelt he's more of like a just a a pure Speedster I I'm kind of not sure how good Bradley is and then this is not a disrespect or a call out thing but like you're leaving Texas Tech which is going to throw the ball a ton and Up Tempo as a receiver to go play for a quarterback with the profile that you just discussed that's a weird thing now granted a lot of this is relationships you do see guys go play for a coach maybe who coached him before or he was really really tight with some High School coaches from their area maybe he was going to get beat out of tech I I don't know uh but that's sort of an interesting one uh to me he also had a little bit higher drop rate than maybe you you would prefer Bond was more sure-handed so like receiving corewise I don't think they're as fast as Georgia Tech was they have better size than Tech did so we'll have to see about the perimeter blocking on some of the screen stuff I would assume they'll be a pretty heavy screen team uh but you know your Corners were generally okay in the screen stuff it was kind of everybody else right uh running back has a familiar face in Tron Ward who transferred from Kansas State happy for him man like get you get a bag from Kansas State and hopefully get something from uh from Boston College you know we had said it at the time like that's that's not a guy that can play in the NFL because the top end speed just isn't there relative to the size you know if you're you know if you're 191 pounds like you got to run not four7 not 48 right so um kind of a cool example of how you know kid that that we she never had any problems with uh you go out and and get a nice little head start on on on postgrad life through nil they also have Kai robish show who's you know pretty decent Runner Pat Garo was gone he was kind of their really really thick Kid last year he's gone to to Nevada offensive line wise is interesting so you lose Christian mahogany who they lost in 22 because remember he blew his knee play in basketball in like July uh and then he came back he uh came back he got drafted pretty highly he played 761 snaps at Right Guard was dominant First Team all ACC like that like clear NFL player um and halfly knew it when he went down that that that they were in trouble um I I talked to him at ACC media day before last year and he's like I mean there's just some some guys you got like if you don't have them on your roster that that that's a problem um aie oie tro is back at uh he played right tackle last year we'll see what he plays this year Kyle hgle another guy honorable mention all ACC just an absolute stalwart played 939 snaps for him last year all all 888 at left guard so this is a pretty important game for Farmer and and for um for djx to make some money on national television and as have a bit of a Redemption game potentially for what went on in Ireland I do think that guard is a significant step down for Boston College hgle was pretty good mahogany was very good um now Logan Taylor played almost all the snaps last year for them at left tackle he made honorable mention all ACC if you read any of the reports out there he's played very little like spring summer fall so uh I know he's dayto day we will see uh if you're Pat pton and looking for a Redemption game this would be a nice one to get if the left tackle that they have is not uh uh is is not 100% or you know just maybe Rusty in the best case his backup Jude bowry also has been dinged up my guess here is that these guys try to give a go of it but if they do not especially if it's both of them out then I think there's a real chance for stage dline like eats these guys alive if both play then I don't really know what to think because like it's still some new pieces I mean mahogany and hgle are not small losses there's a lot of uncertainty from this game man I don't really know exactly what they're expect after digging in because how could you they're going to run new schemes on both sides of the ball it's not like these guys have a tremendous college track record they certainly don't have a great college track record with new pieces you know um I don't expect Tempo typically Bill Bryan does not play with a lot of tempo so I do think it's it's a bit of a slower paced game but I mean that's a lot of new pieces for an o line that you know last year they had five guys play 782 or more they had one kid play 328 which is that's tremendous Health uh on a no line I mean Florida States is like way different given given how dinged up you were last year so um man I don't know a damn thing about their tight end to be honest like he was he wasn't really targeted much last year the numbers are terrible like 63 248 that's not huge anyway uh so that's sort of my preview the offense we don't really know exactly what we're going to get we anticipate probably a little more dropback passing over the course of the season for this game specifically here's question for you I do think Florida State struggled a little bit with trying to compress the pocket and keep Haynes king in check I wonder if they just send it in this game if your backers are having trouble reading and firing one of the Alternatives and there's pluses and minus to this right you could get burned like crazy too one of the Alternatives just send them right um and Flor state does a pretty nice job some of his Creeper stuff and some of it Sim pressure stuff like like Adam Fuller didn't totally forget how to coach in in in one game so I will I like especially if you get some of his new alignment in there I think you need to see a decent bit of that especially you know post Snap depending on how BC wants to use the helmet comps yeah um I'm gonna give a prediction that I've got to go I'm sorry I'm just up against it on the time and I'm getting that like yeah we're supposed to be there in three minute look so uh yeah let's do it all right I'm gonna go 38 23 Florida State um is the line still at 16 16 and a half uh it's got to be somewhere around there right okay yeah yeah uh yeah 17 16 and a half y okay so cool we'll see interested in seeing it uh I do I will you obviously we're all GNA watch every play and blah blah blah but I'm I'm fascinated to see what for State's defense looks like and what their respones and excited for Monday night so I'll let you rattle off a few more minutes here bro great seeing you talk to you soon man yes sir all right uh so let's finish this thing up on a good note so I am going to go 31 I'll go 3114 um I'm not really sure if either team's going to move the ball all that effectively uh I you know maybe over the bye I F you can get some more work in on offense and start to look better but I don't really know if they're going to be amazing in this space um in this game specifically right like coming off the Ireland trip is not easy typically teams that come off these International trips play poorly I don't think that that rule has to hold for FSU simply because they get the two extra days that maybe some of these teams normally don't get uh but again I don't really know how to project that so I'll go with a little bit lower scoring uh but but but a uh a two-score win for the nlls and I'm curious to see just what what do you take away from that game as a coaching staff how do you tighten up your rotations or or change up who gets more of the snaps what do you do formally what do you do Blitz tendency wise what do you do now that people have exposed some things uh that you probably already knew but if they got found out in game one what are your counters to that what are your answers to that so we will be checking all that out really appreciate you guys joining us make sure you give thumbs up uh to the video and like the channel as well more good stuff coming and we'll see youall next time