With a hurricane warning flag flying over Florida State's practice complex, the Seminoles began Miami week Monday morning.
The Friday game last week at Duke allowed FSU to sneak in an extra practice this week so the practice availabilities will be Monday and Wednesday with Tuesday, Thursday and Friday closed to the media. Here are the observations from the first day of practice availability this week.
The Friday game last week at Duke allowed FSU to sneak in an extra practice this week so the practice availabilities will be Monday and Wednesday with Tuesday, Thursday and Friday closed to the media. Here are the observations from the first day of practice availability this week.
- Monday's practice in many ways reminded me of the FSU offense's performance in Friday's loss at Duke. The run game had some nice moments during team periods. Lawrance Toafili, Caziah Holmes, Micahi Danzy and Sam Singleton each had moments where they got to the second level of the defense on the ground for a sizable gain. However, the passing game never was able to string together much success during good-on-good team periods Monday. The pass rush was consistently hurrying up the quarterbacks and making it hard for them to have time to find the open man downfield.
- In 7-on-7 pass skelly work, though, the quarterbacks had more success. Luke Kromenhoek uncorked an exceptional deep ball on the very first play of the period that was run down and caught in the air between two defenders by Lawayne McCoy for a touchdown. It drew a big reaction from me as I didn't think McCoy was going to make the play and the pass couldn't have been much better. Fellow freshman wideout Elijah Moore was again a frequent target of Kromenhoek's during scout-team work and 7-on-7, made a few nice catches and did a good job of getting consistently open. Mike Norvell praised the freshman wide receivers after practice for very impressive days of work.
- I thought the quarterbacks were about even on the day. Neither had stellar days, but one wasn't particularly better or worse than the other on the day. Brock Glenn remains listed as the starter on the depth chart but it remains to be seen what the real situation will be for Saturday's game at Miami.
- In 1-on-1s, Hykeem Williams dropped the first pass of the period, seeing it bounce off his hands. Wide receivers coach Ron Dugans got onto the sophomore, yelling at him to "catch the football." That's just what Williams did in his next two reps, first getting his hands above his head for a nice extended catch on a ball that I thought was going to be too high for him and then creating separation deep for a chunk gain way downfield. While the beginning was not great, it was a better ending to the period for Williams.
- Ja'Bril Rawls had an interception on a Kromenhoek pass during pass skelly 7-on-7. It seemed to be a miscommunication between the quarterback and his intended receiver as the pass was not in the immediate area of any target, instead going close to Rawls who made the play. Grady Kelly also had a pass breakup at the line of scrimmage during 11-on-11 work Monday morning.
