North Florida Sports Network Podcast
North Florida Sports Network Podcast
Rebuilding After Disaster: FSU’s path to redemption in 2025
The North Florida Sports Network.
Speaker 2:The North Florida Sports Network. Everybody just do your job. You understand that.
Speaker 1:The North Florida Sports Network. All right, we're back again. It's the North Florida Sports Network Getting closer.
Speaker 2:How many days we got now? We got 15 days until college football, farmageddon it's going to get things kicked off In Ireland. How about that? Oh?
Speaker 1:I remember that Me, I don't that first drive man. I was like oh my God watch out, thing of beauty.
Speaker 2:That drive is what got DJ drafted in free agency.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what do you think about that Dad? Yeah Well, we're you think about that Dad? Yeah Well, we're going to look into it. How much can you predict? I mean, I don't really. I'm not a fan of it anyway, but I don't have like a big problem with it. I feel like it's part of the sport. I mean, you've got to have expectations, you've got to have the drama. I mean, otherwise, you could just say, hey, give me the budget for each team, which we should do and see where that ends up. I guarantee you, if you just picked off that, you'd probably be right, more than anybody just going off their gut.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there'll be a team or two that spend a lot and have a horrible season.
Speaker 1:Like Indiana last year. If you look at it, though, they spent $20 damn million, and out of nowhere. Yeah, love that quarterback. Is that quarterback that was at Vandy's? He's still there. Yeah, he's still there. That's the kind of guy you want when you're rebuilding a program like Vanderbilt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, you know I wouldn't have minded him last year coming to Florida State.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, definitely you want a guy like that, that's just blatantly, you know confident.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's between the ears, man Right.
Speaker 1:I was watching the Netflix SEC. Thing.
Speaker 2:Another Right, yeah, oh yeah, just propaganda at this point.
Speaker 1:Propagandy. When I hear Jimbo on the SEC Network, what do you got to say, jimbo? Well, we got number one versus number two. They're going to play. It's a big week and whatever expectations you have and whatever predictions you have, you should be able to flip those around after the first couple weeks. It shouldn't be like you know you stay on this team because I thought they were good, because you really don't know anything with a turnover. With most every team, a few teams have like over half of their roster back, but mostly every team in contention is dealing with a new roster.
Speaker 2:Not just that new quarterbacks. You go down the list Texas. New quarterback, ohio State. New quarterback, ohio State. New quarterback, penn State's the only one there in the top five, top ten. I think that's bringing their quarterback from last year back. Um, you know Clemson, you know they got Klubnick back. So there you go. There's two of the top ten, everybody else it's's. You know Georgia. I mean, you really don't know what to expect going into it, even Alabama going to have a new quarterback.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, a couple of guys you know you're excited about in the transfer portal immediately when I saw it were the center, because I needed. You wanted to have another kind of guy that had experience and yeah, you get the all acc guy um you needed that up front. You need a guy that can identify stuff and hopefully you know have that and we right coming from wake forest thomas right coming from wake forest where really offensively it's.
Speaker 2:It's always kind of started with that line. You know they did the slow mesh when they had hartman but even after he left and went to notre dame it was still. You know, everything up front was steady for them. So that's big. Yeah, you bring the guy in there, um he's going.
Speaker 1:You got him as as kind of a veteran guy.
Speaker 2:Then you also have a guard yeah, you brought two SEC transfers and then a guard and a tackle. Gunnar Hansen.
Speaker 1:And you got the guy that wasn't in Florida still. Yeah, Richie Leonard's back he was starting to play better before he got hurt.
Speaker 2:Right, he was one of the best run-blocking guards in the country, yeah, so you got a little bit there. It's just they never played together, so you're going to have to kind of grow week to week to get more cohesive and whatnot I mean it's going to be It'd be great to not have to start off against a team like Alabama.
Speaker 2:That was preseason top ten, but you know, whatever you got two cupcakes after that one and then the big test is going to be going on the road to Virginia. Right, I think after that game you will probably get a better feel of what Florida State's going to be the rest of the year.
Speaker 3:Virginia's taking some hits man.
Speaker 2:Virginia's taking some hits in spring and now in summer camp, losing some defensive backs. They lost their right tackle to an ACL, so might not be as formidable of an opponent as it was.
Speaker 1:You got two tight ends on the Mackey watch list. Yeah, oh yeah, you get the transfer Randy Pittman. Yeah, landon.
Speaker 2:Thomas Landon yeah, you get the transfer. Randy Pittman yeah, landon Thomas. Landon Thomas. You got Pettybaugh in the center. He's on the Remington watch list.
Speaker 1:And you have Richie Leonard on the Warfel trophy yeah. I mean, you got Maxwell Tommy Castellanos.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean these are watch lists, so there's roughly 60, 80 players.
Speaker 1:If we have a good season and he stays healthy stat-wise. I mean the way he runs the ball. If he can throw the ball, he might put up really good numbers. So if he can get the wins and losses.
Speaker 2:The more rushing yardage that he puts up, the better for Florida State.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, nobody knows anything, but ceiling could be pretty high for a guy like him just based on his ability to break open games. If he's able to throw the ball, if they can establish the run. These are all things that nobody really knows.
Speaker 2:Right and they're closing down practice In the passing game. I think he's going to be at his most dangerous as he is extending plays, escaping pressure, buying a couple seconds, letting guys get open, throwing it downfield. I think it's going to be a lot less of dropping back, reading the field, having to diagnose the entire field. I mean those are the kind of things that he has limitations doing, or at least has in the past in his career. I think that's where he and Bill O'Brien kind of started butting heads.
Speaker 2:But you know, that's the beauty of Gus Malzahn is there's very little, just drop back and diagnose the field. There's going to be a lot of movement, a lot of running, a lot of just playing off that, but you know we'll see receivers got to catch the ball. Running back is going to be interesting, man it's. Yeah, I don't know if they've even decided on who who's going to be the starter, but you watch out for chroma. That kid is. He's making waves. Chroma and boggs two freshmen that I think you're going to see a lot of in the offense.
Speaker 2:That's osmane or yeah, usmane, just call him o-mane, and jayvon wade boggs, wade boggs man, first player to hit a home run on his 3000s hit yeah, 63 beers on a cross-country flight um, okay, I feel better about the o-line, just on experience, the starting five is the starting five.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you got. You got a guy gus, melzahn and han, these guys have been around.
Speaker 2:I mean, if anything he's been able to run yeah, well, they, they know what they want it to look like. They know what their offense is. They know what they want it to look like. I think last year you had a guy that was in charge of things that really had no idea what he was doing.
Speaker 1:Right. You just have to lower those expectations Really low. When you have them low, you can get excited. That's right, man. That's when seven wins becomes like pop to champagne type of shit. Well, like you said, I think the Virginia game is going to be the fork in the road. It's kind of like last. You know, we had that debate a few seasons ago, going into our fourth season hard to believe there when the LSU game and then we had the NC State game. Which one was bigger? It's obviously the conference game. In terms of your outlook on the season, you're going to get more eyeballs on the first game.
Speaker 2:To those that argue the LSU game was the biggest game because of the national impact, I would just point to how good did it do us when it came playoff selection time cares about that I mean.
Speaker 1:Well then, that goes to having the expectations lowered by last season, and yeah and just, but I think that's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, when you go to intend, you need to lower those expectations.
Speaker 2:If we're going into the miami game. Three and one, that's about like that is holy shit. We might have a decent season. You could derail after that. But I mean, you know, going three and one in the first four games, that's give it, I'll take it right now.
Speaker 1:Right, well, you're against. That's two teams right there florida, miami are our tribals that are probably expected to be better than you yeah, without question. So better rosters, you can win one of those games. That's a.
Speaker 2:I'll take that right now yeah, hell yeah, so that you just win one game against the four teams that have more talent than you.
Speaker 1:Your three rivals, clemson, miami and Florida, are all better than you right now.
Speaker 2:Right, and there is no way in hell they're going to go up to Clemson and beat Clemson.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:So if you have, the best shot to beat a rival is it's going to be Miami coming here or, if you get to the end of the season, go to gainesville and are somehow playing a beat up florida team yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1:I think clemson's the no chance game oh, dude, there's just no way. There's no way, man I mean you saw how difficult it was for a team like 23 when they went up there right same quarterback, who's still there? Yeah same quarterback, same everything. Yeah, so that's the one team in in the acc that's the clear favorite is clemson um across the board. What? What to expect, though? I mean texas and ohio state are going to be good, but they're supposed to be good, yeah I mean line Ziffy for Texas.
Speaker 2:Right and, like I said, you got new quarterbacks. You know arch Manning I get it, he's a Manning and you just. Everybody expects him to be great and he's getting all these accolades before he's really even done anything. But you know it still remains to be seen if he is actually the goods. You know it still remains to be seen if he is actually the goods. Ohio State you got a brand new kid. Really the first time he's going to be playing big-time college football. Julian Sayen you still got your superstar wide receiver. You know they still got Caleb Downs on defense. But just keep going down the list of teams in the top ten and they're just most of them are breaking in new quarterbacks.
Speaker 1:Yep, well, it's a different game. I mean, you saw Texas Tech snag another big recruit over the likes of Tennessee, florida State.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Possible reclass too. He's a 2027 kid, but he may go.
Speaker 3:Number one player. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:What shocks me? Two things. Number one is that, well, it's not shocking but it is. You know, texas tech is actually doing it. They got a billionaire that's backing everything and why not? Um, but it's another kid coming out of the savannah area. That is just like right now. They're growing past rushers and that little, little tiny city in georgia I mean relatively tiny, but it's.
Speaker 1:It's kind of interesting to me that's the backyard, florida state, georgia, clemson yeah yeah, I mean florida everybody, and he just went in there and got him right. Well, it's, it's.
Speaker 2:You know, they backed up the brink truck yeah, that's, that's what this is, and to that effect, there is now talk about and if you got to, I mean you still got to have a coach there that can sell it.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, it's their GM that's selling that and you know the money he's going to get is you see why he's doing it? But, man, you know they're talking about having rolling national signing days to where you know you don't have to wait on a kid to sign that contract or that revenue share or whatever. So there is no set date. The days of you know kids picking between the five hats on the table or whatever, those are effectively going to end because these teams got to get kids signed as soon as possible. So they know what their salary cap, what they're working with. So it is. It's one step closer to semi-pro man. Florida State needs to find themselves a billionaire.
Speaker 1:Spikes. Well, um, they're going to North Florida. They already went there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, practicing Jacksonville the last couple days. You know I guess it switches it up. It's hard to read too much into practice and reports and stuff like that outside of. You know some of the young kids showing out. You know they've mentioned Boggs. Every single practice is doing something. Same thing with Croma. To me it's funny that Gus Malzahn goes out and gets a wide receiver in two months. That's probably going to end up being better than anything that Ron Dugan's recruited out of high school in the three or four years that he was here, right? So you know there's a little bit of hope there and I think the starting three wide receivers could be really good Beyond that, who knows Exactly?
Speaker 1:And that kind of goes for the entire team which can be exciting when you have when a season like you did, you kind of want to just read, reload, and I mean the one bad thing about having that kind of season and this and used to be that's, oh god, you're gonna be, it's gonna take a long time right you can flip it right, like you could say this yeah, to win nine games this year. I mean I wouldn't be shocked. I doubt it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if they just start gelling like you know, like yeah, In this environment you can flip it and you can turn it around really fast.
Speaker 2:It's the ACC.
Speaker 1:But if you miss, you can have a disastrous season, like you did last year. Oh yeah, so you better hit and you better get the right guy.
Speaker 2:I would say that anything that looks like last season happening this year would have to be because of just massive injury. Right, Because the depth isn't there. But addition by subtraction at a lot of spots You're going to see, the effort on the defensive line is going to probably be night and day between what it was last season and this year. So I mean, you know Well you see Jimbo talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I saw it. You know, what pisses me off when he talks about 2013 is he had the exact same roster in 2012. And I'm not even talking about starting Jameis. You know, obviously you're going to start EJ Manuel. He's been in the program four years. I mean, he was the guy You're going to start him, but maybe have something behind him instead of Clint Trickett.
Speaker 1:Right or a package.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So when you're in Raleigh and he's completely ineffective in the second half, you change it up a little bit. Or when you're playing against Florida and he throws three interceptions in the first half, it's like, all right, man, come over here, I'm going to have a package for Jameis. You go online, online, you watch that goal line practice that Brian Stork put up on the Twitter sphere and you watch that marathon.
Speaker 1:alright let's listen to Jimbo. He's asked. With Freddie Stevenson sat down, this is him talking about the 2013 season. People don't realize this if you go back and look and this is him talking about the 2013 season.
Speaker 3:People don't realize this. If you go back and look in the last 90 years of football, do you know that's the most dominant team in NCAA history, point differential. See, lsu broke our record by most points in a season by one point, but they played an extra game and not only that yes, they did.
Speaker 3:Like you mentioned earlier, we called the dogs off at halftime. We weren't trying to do it, we didn't know, that's just what we played. But you remember we led the country in defense that year in scoring Our point differential was 39 points a game. The largest top five deficit the 51-14 game. Largest top 25 deficit the Marylandland 62 to nothing game. They were top 25 being 62. Nothing beat clemson 51 to 14, who was two top five teams who finished in the top five?
Speaker 3:I mean those team member. The nc state game we're up 35, nothing in the first quarter. Yeah, yeah, I mean I, I don't mean I'm just saying how dominant that team wanted to be. You know, I'm saying whoever we played, if you look it up it's it doesn't get the respect. Every guy on that team played in the NFL. It started and played and played that secondary. All of them played eight or more years. Terrence Brooks I mean how good a player he was. I mean PJ and Darby and Jalen and Lamar and Terrence and Telvin and Eddie, and I mean the whole crew up from Timmy.
Speaker 2:I mean all of them, I mean on offense.
Speaker 3:Everybody played forever and then that team does not get the respect. And had the best kicker, yeah, yeah, our punter would have been one of the tops in the country. He just didn't punt enough, he didn't qualify enough, he didn't have enough punts. I mean, that team does not get the respect and I'll put that team up with any team in the college football. Ever I'll put that team up with anybody.
Speaker 1:Well, those are the facts. I agree with 100% on that one yeah. I think I don't know why it doesn't. I have a big reason it's not SEC team.
Speaker 2:I know why it doesn't. We all know why it doesn't.
Speaker 1:Which started the network the next year.
Speaker 2:Right, we all remember what happened right after the Clemson game.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, the same is still doubting those people wrong.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but hey man they can't ever take it away from anybody.
Speaker 1:Nope, nope, nope, no, they can't.
Speaker 3:We had to go.
Speaker 1:Oh. Oh All right, we got to get out of here, our ride's here, but 15 days, 15 days, preseason underway, terrible loss for the Chargers. Yeah, all pro left tackle Slayton. Oh man, is he done? Yeah, for this season.
Speaker 2:Yikes.
Speaker 1:Just a couple weeks after becoming the highest paid tackle in NFL history.
Speaker 2:That's how I get you man.
Speaker 1:They're going to move Joe Alt over there. Yeah well, I mean, that's about it. Other than losing Herbert, I don't think you can pick a more impactful player, especially doing what Harbaugh likes to do Right, which is run, run, run and then throw, and he can't protect that backside.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and there you go, but you know preseason Kind of makes you wonder why you even put them out there in a game that's useless.
Speaker 1:Well, they got hurt in practice.
Speaker 2:Oh Jesus.
Speaker 1:They didn't even play yeah game, that's useless. Well, they got hurt in practice.
Speaker 2:Oh Jesus, they didn't even play.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's brutal. Yep, that's the first brutal setback of this season. That's the thing you don't account for when you're predicting who's going to get the big entry, who's going to be the surprise team. We've got predictions galore coming up as we move closer to the season. We're going to predict wins and losses for each.
Speaker 2:NFL team. My surprise team is going to be the team that sucks.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're picking a team that people think is going to be good and you think it's going to suck.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, you know who it people think is going to be good and you think it's going to suck.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, you know who it is it's the Niners. Not giving anything away who's picking them to be good this year. So we'll see. I think I might have an idea. We'll have to stay tuned to that. I guess we'll do wins and losses, but it's never been more unsure, and that goes for anybody. Yeah, but it's never been more unsure, and that goes for anybody yeah.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of moving parts in college football right now, right.
Speaker 1:Everybody just switching sides, but it's in the air the hot, the heat. School's getting started back again next week, thank God. We'll get back to you then Get your asses in school, little kids.
Speaker 3:On the North Florida Sports Network, fat. Everybody just do your job. You understand that.
