FSU offense scores ‘17 TDs’ in situational scrimmage

Exact number fuzzy, but regardless, coach Taggart’s quite pleased.

TALLAHASSEE — It’s going to sound like a made-up number. Like Landon Dickerson is embellishing on a massive scale.

But keep in mind that the Florida State offensive lineman was talking about the situational scrimmage the Seminoles held Saturday. Not a full scrimmage, like the simulated game FSU will hold this weekend.

Still. Get ready for this number. “We probably scored like 17 touchdowns,” Dickerson said.

I asked him to repeat it, to make sure I heard the number correctly. And, yep, it was 17. As in: One more than 16. And 13 more touchdowns than the highest total the Seminoles scored against an ACC opponent last season.

Dickerson was quick to point out that these weren’t all touchdown drives going the length of the field. Sometimes the ball was spotted at the 35-yard line. Sometimes it was first-and-goal at the 10. That’s where the “situational” comes in. The Seminoles weren’t driving 80 yards for touchdowns on every possession.

But they did, in fact, score a bunch of touchdowns.

Was it 17, as Dickerson said?

Or was it 14, as estimated by another offensive player? Either way, it was somewhere in that neighborhood.

And the players on the offensive side of the ball seemed downright giddy to talk about it Sunday.

“You can see when this offense gets going, what it’s capable of,” Dickerson said. “And how badly it can affect a defense and make it to where (it’s hard to keep up with). It’s fatigue that’s going to kill people.

“I really think that (Saturday) showed us that if we can do stuff right, keep things rolling, we can really get going.”

Fellow offensive lineman Alec Eberle had a hard time hiding his excitement when he was talking about the offense’s performance Saturday.

He has been here a long time. He has had to point out a thousand middle linebackers in his career. He’s had to change calls on the line and snap the ball with 1 or 2 seconds on the play clock since he’s been in college.

This is different. He talked with a wide smile Sunday about how the offense was snapping the ball Saturday before the defense was set, and how the linemen are now making decisions on the run — after the ball is in play — instead of doing so much pre-snap decision-making.

“Once we got going and we were really pushing it, and I was yelling, ‘Let’s go, let’s go, line ’em up, line ’em up,’ we were going so fast. ... I mean, it’s hard to keep up with us,” Eberle said. “We ran a lot of plays in a short amount of time. And we got to the point where it really doesn’t faze us anymore. We’re so focused on running plays, we’ll run five plays like that.”

Eberle then snapped his fingers five times.

“The defense is so tired,” he said. “And we’re trying to get the ball out before they even get lined up. So when we catch them like that, it makes our jobs way easier.”

You could tell Sunday that Willie Taggart was pleased as well.

The first-year Florida State head coach has watched his defense control practices for most of preseason camp. He’s seen his offense struggle to move the ball, to find the end zone.

But in that first scrimmage, the former quarterback liked what he saw from his up-tempo attack. Finally.

“It went well,” Taggart said. “It went probably better for the offense than it did for the defense. But that was a first throughout training camp.”

The situational scrimmage consisted of the offense starting at its own 35, the other team’s 40, red-zone, firstand-goal at the 10-yard line, first-and-goal at the 5-yard line and then a one-minute drill with the offense down by five.

By and large, from all accounts, the offense was as good Saturday as it’s been since Taggart got here — if not better. Nobody used the word “dominate,” but you certainly got the sense that the offense was overwhelming at times.

Situational or not, 17 touchdowns is no joke.

Certainly not to defensive coordinator Harlon Barnett, who said he made it known to his players — in maybe not the most polite terms — that what happened Saturday was unacceptable.

“We’ve got to be able to change momentum back to our side,” Barnett said. “And we want to run through people. It’s football. So we want to tackle. When we tackle people, we want to knock them backwards. So that’s something we’re going to put more emphasis on and focus on this week.”

But for the offense, it was a glimpse of just how potent this thing can be when it’s clicking.

Dickerson acknowledged with a laugh that the Seminoles won’t be scoring 17 touchdowns in any games this season — that would be a school record! — but he said he wouldn’t be stunned if they could hang half-a-hundred on some teams if they play like they did Saturday afternoon.

“You’re talking about scoring upwards of 50 points in a game,” Dickerson said with a smile. “Hopefully we can do that. If you’re scoring 50 points on a team, it doesn’t really matter what the other team is doing (offensively).”

The next step for the FSU offense will be replicating that performance. Against a defense that didn’t take too kindly to getting knocked around.