It's easy to look at Florida State's upcoming matchup with the NC State Wolfpack and highlight the Pack's secondary as the weak spot next weekend. NC State is fresh off surrendering an ACC single game passing yardage record to Stephen Morris of Miami.
What was once a vaunted unit coming into the season, complete with all-American David Amerson (13 picks in 2011) has been lit up by both Tennessee and Miami and with a top ten offense heading to town in Florida State, needs to get things together quickly.
"Well, certainly Florida State presents all kinds of problems for you," said NC State coach Tom O'Brien on Wednesday. "And that's the biggest challenge of the week that we have in the coaches' meeting room is trying to figure out how we're going to put ourselves in position to try to stay with them."
After a long shootout with Miami, O'Brien is as worried about getting his defense's legs back as making any kind of adjustment.
"I think as far as the team is concerned, the main problem I'm concerned with is their legs and their health. I mean, we played basically a four-hour game in 90-degree heat with humidity astronomical, too. So right now I think the physical fact of getting our legs back, because certainly if we're not as quick as we can be and as fast as we can be, it's going to be tough to stay up with the athletes that Florida State has."
So what's happened to NC State's secondary?
Aside from running into a very athletic Miami team last week. Florida State sophomore Nick Waisome has a theory about the Wolfpack's All-American corner (who was victimized in Miami last weekend).
"I feel like the media's just getting in his head," said Waisome. "Everybody's expecting him to do better and he might be getting caught up in all that and he's just having a tough time with all that. And it looks like a lot of the plays they got him on were those free plays, he's just got to keep playing, regardless if someone's offsides or something like that."
The Seminole secondary has put itself on notice this week too, the flipside of NC State's defensive woes last weekend was that they hung with Miami and had over 600 yards of their own. Waisome and the rest of Florida State's secondary know that it doesn't take much for a talented defensive unit to get exposed on the road.
For the Seminoles' secondary, the biggest part of that is staying disciplined.
"With us we kind of just like to say to our guy, we're going to follow them to the end of the play," said Waisome. "You react to the first move but you've got to be able to play the [second]. You never want to get caught looking unless you're even or on you're on top of the receiver."
While the focus is on NC State's secondary, the 'Noles know they have a tough task of their own shutting down Mike Glennon and a group of receivers that can hurt them.
"They're real shifty, shifty guys and they got one big guy that's pretty tall, you know it's just about staying with our technique and working on our coverages pretty much."
Depending on how things go early and whether or not Florida State can build a lead, they might get plenty of looks.
Check back tomorrow, I'll have several new items up for you.
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