SWC75
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Coach Babers’s show this year show will be Thursday nights at 7PM except when the game is not on a Saturday. The show is two days before the game, except for Thanksgiving week. Here is the schedule:
Thursday, Aug. 29 – 7 pm; Thursday, Sept. 5 – 7 pm; Thursday, Sept. 12 – 7 pm
Thursday, Sept. 19 – 7 pm; Thursday, Sept. 26 – 7 pm; Tuesday, Oct. 8 – 7 pm
Wednesday, Oct. 16 – 7 pm; Thursday, Oct. 24 – 6 pm; Thursday, Oct. 31 – 6 pm
Thursday, Nov. 14 – 6 pm; Thursday, Nov. 21 – 6 pm; Tuesday, Nov. 26 – 6 pm
They are now adding the “Gomez Hour” that they do from 8-9PM for the Jim Boeheim basketball shows to the Dino Babers football show. I’ll be summarizing the comments directly related to the team and the next game (late) on the night of the broadcast and anything else interesting the next day, (if there is anything else that seems interesting). I’ll have a “first hour” and a “second hour” question.
The show will originate from PressRoom Pub, located at 220 Herald Place in Syracuse's historic Herald Square, each week this season.
You can also listen to the show live each week on the Syracuse IMG Sports Network and Cuse.com. Wednesday's show will be on 99.1 FM and 97.7 FM, as well. The show will regularly air on 99.5FM (Syracuse) 99.1 FM (Utica) and 1200 AM.”
You can also get it on: Home | Free Internet Radio | TuneIn
There hasn’t been any change in the phone numbers, which last year were 315-424-8599 (local) or 1-888-746-2873. You can call to ask questions or submit them via Twitter at: https://twitter.com/CuseIMG
#AskDino or through Cuse.com, (the SU Athletic website):
Submit a Question! - Syracuse University Athletics
You can (or could last year, anyway), listen to a podcast of the show, probably the next day, at: Search results for babers | Free Internet Radio | TuneIn
I’ve been asked to continue doing the summaries, even by people who listen to the podcasts. I may focus on the major points, rather than trying to record everything.
My Question(s) or Comments
First Hour:
“Coach, the history of the Pittsburgh series is one of alternating periods of dominance, almost like a pro wrestling match. We won 11 of 16. Then they won 11 in a row. Then we won 16 of 18 with a tie. They’ve now won 15 of 18. I’ve always attributed this to the fact that both schools recruit the same areas, (New York Pennsylvania and Ohio), and whoever does the better job dominates. But I look at our roster and we’ve got only 6 players from Pennsylvania and 4 from Ohio. We have 10 from New York but none from the southern tier or western New York. We have 17 from Florida. Overall our players come from 21 different states, DC and Canada. What teams are the most important for us to beat for recruiting purposes? “
Second Hour:
“Coach, I’d like a clarification about a couple of statements you made in your recent press conferences.
In the Monday press conference before the Pittsburgh game you were asked about Taj Harris. You said, “There’s some stuff that’s come out in the last two weeks that I think has been damaging our guys on the football field as far as their injuries. So I don’t want to talk about this part or that part. We’re watching the tape and it seems like some of our guys are taking shots at particular areas like people are reading press clippings and they’re going after certain spots on people.”
(See 11:30-12:20)
After the Pittsburgh game, you were asked who might be healthy for the next game. You said “We probably ran across a lot of injured units in the 2018 season when you’re just rolling along and then you don’t have those injuries. I can actually think of two teams in particular right now that we faced and they were banged up and they thought we might not go after certain guys and we did and it affected the game early and we’ve got people doing the exact same thing to us and that’s the cool part of football. You watch a lot of tape and you get to know who’s hurt and who’s not hurt and if you can figure it out and you know how to attack people.”
Dino Babers vs Pittsburgh Postgame
(See 8:10-8:50)
What do “going after certain spots on people” and “attack people” mean? Are we talking about running plays that take advent age of the limitations of injured players or are we talking about making their injuries worse?”
The Show
(I sometimes re-arrange the comments so that statements made on the same subject are reported together, even if they came at different points of the show.)
(Program notes: the Dino Babers Show will be from 6PM-8PM the rest of the season. The Jim Boeheim Show, which begins on Tuesday, 11/12, will still be from 7PM-9PM. The Boeheim Show will be on Tuesday for the first two weeks, (11/12-11/19), then move to Thursdays. They didn’t say what the plan is for Thanksgiving week, when the Babers show will be on Tuesday the 26th)
They have switched the less substantial Gomez hour to the first hour, (complete with musical interludes) for some reason. They began by lauding the cuisine at the Newsroom Pub. Coach said “Come on down and have a good meal before you get late….it gets late.” It sounded for all the world like he was urging us to come on down to the Pressroom Pub before we get laid…
In the Pittsburgh game “We competed right down to the last fumble that Kenny Ruff ripped out of the guys hand. It’s disappointing that they overturned that play but it’s also disappointing that we let it come down to that play. There’s only so much I can say about it. It just shouldn’t have come down to that.”
“The team is extremely positive. They have been very aggressive in practice, taking it out on each other this week. Some guys got banged up. Hopefully, this weekend, we can take it out on somebody else.” He didn’t say who got banged up or how seriously. He didn’t seem worried about it.
“Clayton Welch did some things well. I’m excited to see him play and to watch him improve if he gets another opportunity. He knows he can go out there and do it.”
Gomez asked what they show in the film room on Sundays. “We pull out 18 plays from each third of the game, positive and negative. We teach them that every play matters.” Does Dino ever look at films from old games, months or years later? “Sometimes. It’s normally a loss that just hasn’t left me yet. Sometimes I see some things we used to do and decide to go back to it.”
I called in my first question about who our recruiting rivals are now. DB: “Pitt is definitely in that group. Anybody in the Northeast corridor. We start here in New York and spiral out to new Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Wisconsin. We want to sign young men who want to play in front of their families. Parents will usually go to wherever the game is but the extended family will go if the game is within their general area. It helped last year when we got the bowl game off our back.” (Meaning, in Coach Mac’s words, that we got “bowl credibility”) “Kids know we can win. We’ve turned the corner. We’ve no arrived yet.” (That’s our problem: we thought 10 wins meant that we had arrived.) “We only go really far away if we can’t get our numbers here.”
Here are the numbers I came up with for the states our players come from:
17 - Florida
10 - New York
8 - New Jersey
6 - Pennsylvania & DC
5 - Connecticut
4 - California, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Maryland, North Carolina & Canada
3 - Illinois and Texas
2 - Indiana, Massachusetts and Wisconsin
1- Mississippi, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Washington
They then talked about the extra motivation the Florida kids because their families will be able to see them. “They have a lot of relatives from different parts of the state that will drive there. A lot of people from Syracuse live in Florida. Some are in retirement communities. They really like their tax brackets.
Linda Lerch, former Cornell women’s basketball coach, currently working for Vangard Research and Title Services, called in. She seemed to know Dino so he perhaps had done business with her before. She said that when she first saw Dino’s daughter, she thought they were basketball recruits. Dino agreed that they were very tall, (but didn’t say if they played basketball). She has a business taking people to the Dome and said their number of customers grew by 67% after last year. Dino gasped. Linda feels that “People who don’t go to practice shouldn’t have opinions on Game Day.” Dino: “I’m going with if you can pay your money and got to the games you can have your opinion. People who don’t go should go and see what they think.”
They got to talk about service academies like Army. “They wear you down with discipline and toughness and hope you are tactically incorrect.” (For a definition of “tactically incorrect” please see highlights of the 2013 Syracuse-Georgia Tech game.)
Gomez informed Coach Babers what when Jim Boeheim was a student at SU, he was, by his own acclamation, the GOAT of intramural football at SU. DB: “He’s tall…”
They talked about Greg Paulus, who will now be the head basketball coach at Niagara when they come to the Dome to play JB’s team. Greg played point guard for Coach K and then quarterback for Doug Marrone here. DB: “I thought I was going to be our quarterback in high school when this dude came from Texas who had been a point guard and beat me out. Bot point guards and quarterbacks have to see the whole field and distribute the ball unselfishly. It’s one thing to throw a pass in basketball and the player misses a shot because he took it from the wrong position and another when he makes it from the right position. A guy won’t say he can’t make a shot from 15 feet even if he’s better from 10 feet. A great quarterback knows how to throw it to each of his receivers: on a line or on a loop. He knows everybody’s strengths and weaknesses.”
Coach went to see the movie “Joker” and liked it. He ranked the Jokers he’s seen as 1) the dead guy (Heath Ledger), 2) Phoenix, (Joachim) and 3) That Romeo guy, (Cesar). Sorry, Jack. Coach binges watches movies series: Star Wars “in the correct order”, The Godfather, Rocky, Alien, (even though he doesn’t like scary movies).
A caller named Dennis said that “many fewer SU students are studying abroad this semester because they want to watch the football team after last year. He called it the “Babers effect” Babers said his own daughter has postponed her studying abroad to see last year’s team. It was a good decision. (I’ve studied a few broads in my time…)
They talked about the cranes outside the Dome, the biggest of which has been named “Walt”. Walt has 4,300 followers on Instagram. Gomez has only 130. DB: “All ex-girlfriends”. (Why did they become his girlfriends to begin with?)
Gomez cited a poll about the “greatest characters in NFL history”. Dino suggested it was full of Raiders and, in fact, Al Davis, John Madden and Kenny Stabler were on the list. But #1 was Broadway Joe Namath. What about Art Donovan?
Matt Park came on the second hour. He asked about how to put disappointing games behind you. DB: “we need to really put together the game that is inside of us, to do things right and get the calls. The Kids believe. We could have beaten them down there except for a blocked field goal. Last year we beat them up here for the first time since 1966. It will be their homecoming and their biggest crowd. They are 2-3, (in the conference), but still a talented team.”
Dino said he didn’t want to look back but the Pitt game, “If we must go there…it’s a game of inches. There were 100 plays that told the story of that game.”
I called in my second question. Dino thanked me for the opportunity to clarify what he was talking about. “It’s two things. In the first case, it was about teams trying to hit players where they were injured to get them out of games. You can hit a running back in a lot of places, from his shoes to , well, not hit helmet, but his shoulders and it’s legal. There were a lot of plays where guys were hitting our guys in their owie spots. It’s not something we do.”
“In the second case, we were talking about running plays that would take advent age of an injured player’s limitations. If a guy has a bad ankle, that’s going to reduce his speed. If a guy has his arm in a shoulder strap, he’s not going to be able to get it up to defend passes. But we’re not going to get into the dirty stuff.”
Matt asked about the quarterback situation for Florida State. Dino: “I don’t mean to sound arrogant but if I want to play two quarterbacks, I will. If one guy is less likely to do what we want to do to attack a defense, we will make the switch. And there’s nothing wrong with Rex Culpepper, either. We like all three of our quarterbacks but there is an order.” Dino recalled he was once of on the staff of a team that alternated quarterbacks, went 12-1 and was ranked 4th in the country. This would be the 1998 Arizona team. “That is very unusual. We had a fantastic team 4 offensive linemen, 2 running backs, 2 tight ends and 3 wide receivers were drafted by the NFL> Maybe it didn’t matter who was at quarterback.”
Matt asked Dino to discuss FSU’s quarterbacks. “Alex Hornibrook, (a grad transfer from Wisconsin) is an accurate passer. He flows through the offense, enabling them to run normal plays. James Blackmon is more athletic and dynamic. He’s been with the team longer and the kids are pulling for him.”
“Clayton showed that he’ll go vertical and throw it over a blitz.” Matt said that it was almost a punt. Dino said he was “impressed that he changed the elevation of the ball. A lot of things were going on, (between Taj and the defender) that I can’t mention on the radio. It was the second longest pass play in SU history.” That reminded Matt of the day’s trivia question: “What was the longest pass play in SU history – and who caught the ball”. (Hint: it looked exactly like the play on Friday)
Marv in Tampa wanted to know what can be done about our slow starts. Dino said that he had “changed practice to move up some of our action”, whatever that means. He’s also looking at play selection although “you can lose a game in the first half if you make mistakes.” Matt asked about the first two plays against Pitt, a drop and a bobble that could reach have gone the distance. Dino attributed it to “nervous energy. Basketball players who are deadeye shooters start games with airballs because of the adrenaline. The best players are normally sleeping before a game. ‘We got this’. The guys that throw up aren’t the most consistent guys.” (But they might be occasionally great.)
Another caller, whose name I didn’t get, said he hopes out offensive line is ready for the noise in Florida State’s stadium. He wondered if we could avoid sacks on third and 10 with rollouts. Finally, he wondered why Pitt’s receivers were so wide open on third down. Dino acknowledged that rollouts could get a quarterback away from pressure and “remaining upright”. But it also limits his options. “We want to attack the entire football field. It’s 53 yards wide. In the pocket we can throw anywhere. If we sprint out, the defensive backs will change their protection toward that side of the field. That limits us to short passes. Those plays where people complain the receiver didn’t go deep enough to get the first down tend to be plays where the quarterback left the pocket.” He didn’t mention that Tommy DeVito isn’t very good at throwing on the run. Matt said “Section 218 just sees the results of the play, not all the things that go into it.” (So does section 117). DB: “The important thing is to stay on schedule on 1st and 2nd down so we don’t have 3rd and 10. If it’s third and three, the quarterback can roll out and run or pass for the first down.”
What about rotating the offensive linemen to keep them fresh and get some fresh talent in there? “It’s viable is the young men are capable and understand verbal communication. There’s also ‘body language’: if I touch you as I’m being contacted, that can tell you what to do. If I shove a guy in front of you, I want you to handle him next. It’s non-verbal communication. You need guys who have danced with each other a lot. But if somebody’s not doing the job, you have to put someone else in there.”
Janet wants “more hurry up”. Dino: “I don’t want to take anything off the table. Florida State monitors these shows to see what they can pick up.” He and Matt used some “Spaceballs” terminology: we have “ridiculous speed” and “ludicrous speed”. We don’t always use ludicrous speed, (4-5 times a game), “because we stop ourselves with penalties” What’s the difference? Ridiculous speed is “a little less”. What’s below that? “Ramming speed.”
Teams have been scoring with trick plays against us. Do we have any trick plays? “yes. Once you hit one the opposition wants to sue one of theirs. We’ve had three run against us and two worked for touchdowns. Other teams say that so they will want to use theirs. We’ll need to practice it by switching things up on our defense in practice.”
Have the losses impacted recruiting commitments? “Our commitments are still faithfully Orange. We’ll see what happens down the stretch.”
“Florida State’s tailback, (Cam Akers), nose guard, (Marvin Wilson), and, if he comes out, wide receiver, (Tamarrion Terry), are all likely first round picks. We can’t stop them but if we can contain them and find a way to get some more points, we can win. Akers is really, really good. He’ll be the best player on the football field.” Matt noted that Aker’s was limited to 52 yards on 10 carries last year, due to the fact that we go out to a big lead. DB: “One way to take the ball out of a player’s hands is to get the opposing coach to do it.”
They ended by talking to Vinson Reynolds, Dino’s defensive tackles coach. He’s had to do without Bear Williams but praised Josh Black and Kenneth Ruff. Josh “has been very consistent. He loves the game and is a student of the game. He gets an idea or a technique the first time. He’s been nicked up in his career but has overcome that. He and Ken get sacks when Kendall and Alton force the quarterback to step up.
On Florida State: “Cam Akers is big and thick. (?) he’s probably the second best back in the conference to that Clemson kid, (Travis Etienne). He beat us with a couple of explosive runs two years ago. He has good ball skills.” He mused. “We’ve never won down there….Well….”
Thursday, Aug. 29 – 7 pm; Thursday, Sept. 5 – 7 pm; Thursday, Sept. 12 – 7 pm
Thursday, Sept. 19 – 7 pm; Thursday, Sept. 26 – 7 pm; Tuesday, Oct. 8 – 7 pm
Wednesday, Oct. 16 – 7 pm; Thursday, Oct. 24 – 6 pm; Thursday, Oct. 31 – 6 pm
Thursday, Nov. 14 – 6 pm; Thursday, Nov. 21 – 6 pm; Tuesday, Nov. 26 – 6 pm
They are now adding the “Gomez Hour” that they do from 8-9PM for the Jim Boeheim basketball shows to the Dino Babers football show. I’ll be summarizing the comments directly related to the team and the next game (late) on the night of the broadcast and anything else interesting the next day, (if there is anything else that seems interesting). I’ll have a “first hour” and a “second hour” question.
The show will originate from PressRoom Pub, located at 220 Herald Place in Syracuse's historic Herald Square, each week this season.
You can also listen to the show live each week on the Syracuse IMG Sports Network and Cuse.com. Wednesday's show will be on 99.1 FM and 97.7 FM, as well. The show will regularly air on 99.5FM (Syracuse) 99.1 FM (Utica) and 1200 AM.”
You can also get it on: Home | Free Internet Radio | TuneIn
There hasn’t been any change in the phone numbers, which last year were 315-424-8599 (local) or 1-888-746-2873. You can call to ask questions or submit them via Twitter at: https://twitter.com/CuseIMG
#AskDino or through Cuse.com, (the SU Athletic website):
Submit a Question! - Syracuse University Athletics
You can (or could last year, anyway), listen to a podcast of the show, probably the next day, at: Search results for babers | Free Internet Radio | TuneIn
I’ve been asked to continue doing the summaries, even by people who listen to the podcasts. I may focus on the major points, rather than trying to record everything.
My Question(s) or Comments
First Hour:
“Coach, the history of the Pittsburgh series is one of alternating periods of dominance, almost like a pro wrestling match. We won 11 of 16. Then they won 11 in a row. Then we won 16 of 18 with a tie. They’ve now won 15 of 18. I’ve always attributed this to the fact that both schools recruit the same areas, (New York Pennsylvania and Ohio), and whoever does the better job dominates. But I look at our roster and we’ve got only 6 players from Pennsylvania and 4 from Ohio. We have 10 from New York but none from the southern tier or western New York. We have 17 from Florida. Overall our players come from 21 different states, DC and Canada. What teams are the most important for us to beat for recruiting purposes? “
Second Hour:
“Coach, I’d like a clarification about a couple of statements you made in your recent press conferences.
In the Monday press conference before the Pittsburgh game you were asked about Taj Harris. You said, “There’s some stuff that’s come out in the last two weeks that I think has been damaging our guys on the football field as far as their injuries. So I don’t want to talk about this part or that part. We’re watching the tape and it seems like some of our guys are taking shots at particular areas like people are reading press clippings and they’re going after certain spots on people.”
(See 11:30-12:20)
After the Pittsburgh game, you were asked who might be healthy for the next game. You said “We probably ran across a lot of injured units in the 2018 season when you’re just rolling along and then you don’t have those injuries. I can actually think of two teams in particular right now that we faced and they were banged up and they thought we might not go after certain guys and we did and it affected the game early and we’ve got people doing the exact same thing to us and that’s the cool part of football. You watch a lot of tape and you get to know who’s hurt and who’s not hurt and if you can figure it out and you know how to attack people.”
Dino Babers vs Pittsburgh Postgame
(See 8:10-8:50)
What do “going after certain spots on people” and “attack people” mean? Are we talking about running plays that take advent age of the limitations of injured players or are we talking about making their injuries worse?”
The Show
(I sometimes re-arrange the comments so that statements made on the same subject are reported together, even if they came at different points of the show.)
(Program notes: the Dino Babers Show will be from 6PM-8PM the rest of the season. The Jim Boeheim Show, which begins on Tuesday, 11/12, will still be from 7PM-9PM. The Boeheim Show will be on Tuesday for the first two weeks, (11/12-11/19), then move to Thursdays. They didn’t say what the plan is for Thanksgiving week, when the Babers show will be on Tuesday the 26th)
They have switched the less substantial Gomez hour to the first hour, (complete with musical interludes) for some reason. They began by lauding the cuisine at the Newsroom Pub. Coach said “Come on down and have a good meal before you get late….it gets late.” It sounded for all the world like he was urging us to come on down to the Pressroom Pub before we get laid…
In the Pittsburgh game “We competed right down to the last fumble that Kenny Ruff ripped out of the guys hand. It’s disappointing that they overturned that play but it’s also disappointing that we let it come down to that play. There’s only so much I can say about it. It just shouldn’t have come down to that.”
“The team is extremely positive. They have been very aggressive in practice, taking it out on each other this week. Some guys got banged up. Hopefully, this weekend, we can take it out on somebody else.” He didn’t say who got banged up or how seriously. He didn’t seem worried about it.
“Clayton Welch did some things well. I’m excited to see him play and to watch him improve if he gets another opportunity. He knows he can go out there and do it.”
Gomez asked what they show in the film room on Sundays. “We pull out 18 plays from each third of the game, positive and negative. We teach them that every play matters.” Does Dino ever look at films from old games, months or years later? “Sometimes. It’s normally a loss that just hasn’t left me yet. Sometimes I see some things we used to do and decide to go back to it.”
I called in my first question about who our recruiting rivals are now. DB: “Pitt is definitely in that group. Anybody in the Northeast corridor. We start here in New York and spiral out to new Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Wisconsin. We want to sign young men who want to play in front of their families. Parents will usually go to wherever the game is but the extended family will go if the game is within their general area. It helped last year when we got the bowl game off our back.” (Meaning, in Coach Mac’s words, that we got “bowl credibility”) “Kids know we can win. We’ve turned the corner. We’ve no arrived yet.” (That’s our problem: we thought 10 wins meant that we had arrived.) “We only go really far away if we can’t get our numbers here.”
Here are the numbers I came up with for the states our players come from:
17 - Florida
10 - New York
8 - New Jersey
6 - Pennsylvania & DC
5 - Connecticut
4 - California, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Maryland, North Carolina & Canada
3 - Illinois and Texas
2 - Indiana, Massachusetts and Wisconsin
1- Mississippi, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Washington
They then talked about the extra motivation the Florida kids because their families will be able to see them. “They have a lot of relatives from different parts of the state that will drive there. A lot of people from Syracuse live in Florida. Some are in retirement communities. They really like their tax brackets.
Linda Lerch, former Cornell women’s basketball coach, currently working for Vangard Research and Title Services, called in. She seemed to know Dino so he perhaps had done business with her before. She said that when she first saw Dino’s daughter, she thought they were basketball recruits. Dino agreed that they were very tall, (but didn’t say if they played basketball). She has a business taking people to the Dome and said their number of customers grew by 67% after last year. Dino gasped. Linda feels that “People who don’t go to practice shouldn’t have opinions on Game Day.” Dino: “I’m going with if you can pay your money and got to the games you can have your opinion. People who don’t go should go and see what they think.”
They got to talk about service academies like Army. “They wear you down with discipline and toughness and hope you are tactically incorrect.” (For a definition of “tactically incorrect” please see highlights of the 2013 Syracuse-Georgia Tech game.)
Gomez informed Coach Babers what when Jim Boeheim was a student at SU, he was, by his own acclamation, the GOAT of intramural football at SU. DB: “He’s tall…”
They talked about Greg Paulus, who will now be the head basketball coach at Niagara when they come to the Dome to play JB’s team. Greg played point guard for Coach K and then quarterback for Doug Marrone here. DB: “I thought I was going to be our quarterback in high school when this dude came from Texas who had been a point guard and beat me out. Bot point guards and quarterbacks have to see the whole field and distribute the ball unselfishly. It’s one thing to throw a pass in basketball and the player misses a shot because he took it from the wrong position and another when he makes it from the right position. A guy won’t say he can’t make a shot from 15 feet even if he’s better from 10 feet. A great quarterback knows how to throw it to each of his receivers: on a line or on a loop. He knows everybody’s strengths and weaknesses.”
Coach went to see the movie “Joker” and liked it. He ranked the Jokers he’s seen as 1) the dead guy (Heath Ledger), 2) Phoenix, (Joachim) and 3) That Romeo guy, (Cesar). Sorry, Jack. Coach binges watches movies series: Star Wars “in the correct order”, The Godfather, Rocky, Alien, (even though he doesn’t like scary movies).
A caller named Dennis said that “many fewer SU students are studying abroad this semester because they want to watch the football team after last year. He called it the “Babers effect” Babers said his own daughter has postponed her studying abroad to see last year’s team. It was a good decision. (I’ve studied a few broads in my time…)
They talked about the cranes outside the Dome, the biggest of which has been named “Walt”. Walt has 4,300 followers on Instagram. Gomez has only 130. DB: “All ex-girlfriends”. (Why did they become his girlfriends to begin with?)
Gomez cited a poll about the “greatest characters in NFL history”. Dino suggested it was full of Raiders and, in fact, Al Davis, John Madden and Kenny Stabler were on the list. But #1 was Broadway Joe Namath. What about Art Donovan?
Matt Park came on the second hour. He asked about how to put disappointing games behind you. DB: “we need to really put together the game that is inside of us, to do things right and get the calls. The Kids believe. We could have beaten them down there except for a blocked field goal. Last year we beat them up here for the first time since 1966. It will be their homecoming and their biggest crowd. They are 2-3, (in the conference), but still a talented team.”
Dino said he didn’t want to look back but the Pitt game, “If we must go there…it’s a game of inches. There were 100 plays that told the story of that game.”
I called in my second question. Dino thanked me for the opportunity to clarify what he was talking about. “It’s two things. In the first case, it was about teams trying to hit players where they were injured to get them out of games. You can hit a running back in a lot of places, from his shoes to , well, not hit helmet, but his shoulders and it’s legal. There were a lot of plays where guys were hitting our guys in their owie spots. It’s not something we do.”
“In the second case, we were talking about running plays that would take advent age of an injured player’s limitations. If a guy has a bad ankle, that’s going to reduce his speed. If a guy has his arm in a shoulder strap, he’s not going to be able to get it up to defend passes. But we’re not going to get into the dirty stuff.”
Matt asked about the quarterback situation for Florida State. Dino: “I don’t mean to sound arrogant but if I want to play two quarterbacks, I will. If one guy is less likely to do what we want to do to attack a defense, we will make the switch. And there’s nothing wrong with Rex Culpepper, either. We like all three of our quarterbacks but there is an order.” Dino recalled he was once of on the staff of a team that alternated quarterbacks, went 12-1 and was ranked 4th in the country. This would be the 1998 Arizona team. “That is very unusual. We had a fantastic team 4 offensive linemen, 2 running backs, 2 tight ends and 3 wide receivers were drafted by the NFL> Maybe it didn’t matter who was at quarterback.”
Matt asked Dino to discuss FSU’s quarterbacks. “Alex Hornibrook, (a grad transfer from Wisconsin) is an accurate passer. He flows through the offense, enabling them to run normal plays. James Blackmon is more athletic and dynamic. He’s been with the team longer and the kids are pulling for him.”
“Clayton showed that he’ll go vertical and throw it over a blitz.” Matt said that it was almost a punt. Dino said he was “impressed that he changed the elevation of the ball. A lot of things were going on, (between Taj and the defender) that I can’t mention on the radio. It was the second longest pass play in SU history.” That reminded Matt of the day’s trivia question: “What was the longest pass play in SU history – and who caught the ball”. (Hint: it looked exactly like the play on Friday)
Marv in Tampa wanted to know what can be done about our slow starts. Dino said that he had “changed practice to move up some of our action”, whatever that means. He’s also looking at play selection although “you can lose a game in the first half if you make mistakes.” Matt asked about the first two plays against Pitt, a drop and a bobble that could reach have gone the distance. Dino attributed it to “nervous energy. Basketball players who are deadeye shooters start games with airballs because of the adrenaline. The best players are normally sleeping before a game. ‘We got this’. The guys that throw up aren’t the most consistent guys.” (But they might be occasionally great.)
Another caller, whose name I didn’t get, said he hopes out offensive line is ready for the noise in Florida State’s stadium. He wondered if we could avoid sacks on third and 10 with rollouts. Finally, he wondered why Pitt’s receivers were so wide open on third down. Dino acknowledged that rollouts could get a quarterback away from pressure and “remaining upright”. But it also limits his options. “We want to attack the entire football field. It’s 53 yards wide. In the pocket we can throw anywhere. If we sprint out, the defensive backs will change their protection toward that side of the field. That limits us to short passes. Those plays where people complain the receiver didn’t go deep enough to get the first down tend to be plays where the quarterback left the pocket.” He didn’t mention that Tommy DeVito isn’t very good at throwing on the run. Matt said “Section 218 just sees the results of the play, not all the things that go into it.” (So does section 117). DB: “The important thing is to stay on schedule on 1st and 2nd down so we don’t have 3rd and 10. If it’s third and three, the quarterback can roll out and run or pass for the first down.”
What about rotating the offensive linemen to keep them fresh and get some fresh talent in there? “It’s viable is the young men are capable and understand verbal communication. There’s also ‘body language’: if I touch you as I’m being contacted, that can tell you what to do. If I shove a guy in front of you, I want you to handle him next. It’s non-verbal communication. You need guys who have danced with each other a lot. But if somebody’s not doing the job, you have to put someone else in there.”
Janet wants “more hurry up”. Dino: “I don’t want to take anything off the table. Florida State monitors these shows to see what they can pick up.” He and Matt used some “Spaceballs” terminology: we have “ridiculous speed” and “ludicrous speed”. We don’t always use ludicrous speed, (4-5 times a game), “because we stop ourselves with penalties” What’s the difference? Ridiculous speed is “a little less”. What’s below that? “Ramming speed.”
Teams have been scoring with trick plays against us. Do we have any trick plays? “yes. Once you hit one the opposition wants to sue one of theirs. We’ve had three run against us and two worked for touchdowns. Other teams say that so they will want to use theirs. We’ll need to practice it by switching things up on our defense in practice.”
Have the losses impacted recruiting commitments? “Our commitments are still faithfully Orange. We’ll see what happens down the stretch.”
“Florida State’s tailback, (Cam Akers), nose guard, (Marvin Wilson), and, if he comes out, wide receiver, (Tamarrion Terry), are all likely first round picks. We can’t stop them but if we can contain them and find a way to get some more points, we can win. Akers is really, really good. He’ll be the best player on the football field.” Matt noted that Aker’s was limited to 52 yards on 10 carries last year, due to the fact that we go out to a big lead. DB: “One way to take the ball out of a player’s hands is to get the opposing coach to do it.”
They ended by talking to Vinson Reynolds, Dino’s defensive tackles coach. He’s had to do without Bear Williams but praised Josh Black and Kenneth Ruff. Josh “has been very consistent. He loves the game and is a student of the game. He gets an idea or a technique the first time. He’s been nicked up in his career but has overcome that. He and Ken get sacks when Kendall and Alton force the quarterback to step up.
On Florida State: “Cam Akers is big and thick. (?) he’s probably the second best back in the conference to that Clemson kid, (Travis Etienne). He beat us with a couple of explosive runs two years ago. He has good ball skills.” He mused. “We’ve never won down there….Well….”
