NC State has seen plenty of film on QB
TALLAHASSEE — With the Florida State football team playing only one game this season and resorting to true freshman quarterback James Blackman to lead the offense on Saturday, NC State coach Dave Doeren luckily did not have to dig too deep into the film archives to help his team prepare for the matchup.
Thanks to Hudl, a popular site that helps coaches and players at all levels edit and share film of various sports, Doeren easily found high school football film of Blackman, a former Belle Glade Glades High standout who will be the first true freshman to start for the Seminoles since 1985.
“It’s easy to watch film of high school kids these days you can go to Hudl and pull up as much as you want,” Doeren said during the ACC coaches’ teleconference Wednesday.
“So we’ve been able to see a lot of his high school film. He has a strong arm. You can see why they wanted him there. … He’s got height. He can get it out quickly. He’s got a good release, and he’s got great arm strength.”
Blackman, who played sparingly in FSU’s seasonopening loss to Alabama on Sept. 2, will start against NC State’s talented and experienced front seven on defense in place of quarterback Deondre Francois, who is out for the season after repairing a torn patellar tendon in his right knee suffered during the opener.
Unlike most college football teams heading into the fourth week of the season, the Seminoles do not have three games of film for opponents to dissect beforehand. FSU’s game against Louisiana-Monroe on Sept. 9 was canceled and the Seminoles’ Week 3 contest against in-state rival Miami was postponed to Oct. 7.
As No. 12 FSU (0-1) and NC State (2-1) both begin ACC play this week, both sides are unsure of the advantages or disadvantages they might have because of the Hurricane Irma layoff.
FSU will go 21 days between games, the third longest drought between contests in school history. Some could say FSU likened the layoff to preparing for a bowl game, but coach Jimbo Fisher said his team was prepared to play both of the games it missed.
“We didn't know we had 21 days until up until the end of it. I mean, it wasn't a thing like you knew this was a planned out deal,” Fisher said Wednesday. “… It's not like a bowl game. It's nowhere close because of, you know what's going [on] ahead of you and you've been through a whole season where your team is at, what it does well, what it doesn't do well.
“At the beginning of the season and not knowing you are having a 21-day layoff, it's totally different.”
NC State, which lost its season opener at South Carolina, but rebounded with home wins over Marshall and Furman, has also depended on previous matchups against FSU to game plan.
With Fisher’s coaching staff remaining intact for most of the past three seasons, Doeren has kept tabs on how the Seminoles have schemed against his team while also hoping to gain an edge from film featuring common opponents.
Along with scoping out Blackman, Doeren has also relied on a slim selection of film featuring running backs Jacques Patrick and Cam Akers and receivers Auden Tate, Nyqwan Murray and Keith Gavin because of their relatively new presence in the Seminoles’ offense.
Doeren, who is in his fifth season at the helm of the Wolfpack, hopes the film study can help NC State win its first game over FSU during his tenure.
“I think the two sides of the ball are a little different,” Doeren said. “On defense, there’s nine returning starters, so you can go back and look at a lot of film on that defense. Offensively, obviously, the running back load was Dalvin Cook last year, so you still don’t know truly the style of these two guys [Patrick and Akers] there’s not a ton of film. Then the passing game, the receivers have only one game of film and the quarterback has none.
“There will be some adjusting. You just have to go off what Jimbo has done in the past, and if it gets different, make good adjustments on the sideline.”