This is the place to discuss Spring-related stuff. The forum is open-ended but here are some of the obvious topics of interest:

1. Who do you expect to replace the 2011 starters/contributors who don’t return?

• Offense: Reed (WR), Reliford (TE), Sanders (LT)
• Defense: Bradham (LB), Parks (S), Harris (CB)

Jimbo is on record saying that Brooks will be the de facto starter to replace Parks at S especially since Moody has moved to LB. I'd also expect Telvin to replace Bradham, but I wonder if Moody or Luc have a chance to fill Bradham's spot. Reed will be easy to replace because we're loaded at WR and I expect to see more of O'Leary at TE. And not only does Sanders need to be replaced at LT, both starting OT positions may be up for grabs this spring.

2. What are the most important position battles? I'm interested in both OT positions, C, TE and back-up QB.

3. Who are the players that you are most interested in seeing?

There are the early enrollees: Pender, Glauser and Beatty; and guys who were highly-regarded out of HS but we haven't seen at all: Benjamin, Waisome, K. Smith, etc; and highly-regarded guys who we have only seen a little from: Luc, Karlos, Wilder, etc.

4. Who do you expect to surprise and have a great spring?

5. Last, Spring Practice Schedule info:

• Spring Practice begins March 19th and ends April 14th.
  
• FSU’s Spring Game will be broadcast live on April 14th at 4 pm on ESPN3.
  

The motivation for this piece was to try to identify the weakest parts of our 2010 defense in order to see which areas need to be the focus in the 2011 season.  I got my hands on big chunk of recent (2005-2010) FSU defensive data that was generously given to me by Bill Connelly.  Although the data I received does not provide the complete statistical picture of FSU's defense, some of the data is represented by game quarter, down, explosiveness, etc.  (For very good work on FSU's 2010 season that represents some of the data in slightly different ways, see MonarchNole's great collection of FSU statistics here.)  For my purposes I will only focus on defensive statistics from 2009 and 2010 because in 2010 FSU had a first-year DC who implemented a new scheme and playbook, so inter-year comparisons will be interesting.  And although our offense isn't perfect, it has been top 10 for the past two years under Jimbo Fisher, so for the offense 2011 is more about maintenance than improvement.

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While most think that FSU has a shot at playing in a BCS title in '11, there is even greater consensus that '12 is the season that sets up perfectly for FSU to make a run at playing for a BCS title: a talented senior QB, a dominant DL, a stable of RBs, a surplus of talented WRs, enough talented CBs for a no-fly zone and enough talented LBs to make for an excellent front 7. The only question mark it seems will be the OL. After '10 we lost two starters: Hudson & McMahon. Because of this we smartly signed the #1 JUCO OL, Fahrenkrug, to minimize the drop-off of losing two starters on the OL. After the '11 season, however, we lose the following '11 projected starters: Sanders, Spurlock and Datko. (Note: Spurlock may never play another down because of multiple concussions, sadly.) That means that in the span of two seasons we'll lose all five of our OL who started in ‘10. We know that Fahrenkrug will start somewhere inside in '12, but other than that the starters at the other positions are uncertain. Likely starters, however, are Faircloth who can play inside or out; and Stork and Orelus somewhere on the inside. This leaves at least one starting tackle spot vacant that must be filled by Foose or one of our tackles from our '11 class. And it may be presumptuous to assume that the likely starters (Faircloth, Stork, Orelus) will in fact be starters, which potentially leaves more spots on the interior OL that would need to be filled by some of the interior linemen from the '11 class. The good news is that Pettis and Lovelady enrolled this past January and so have extra experience that may help them handle a starting job. Also good news is that we are pursuing a '12 JUCO OL (Glauser) who would be ready to start in '12.

I'm interested your thoughts about the projected starting OL for '12, but I'm most interested in the bigger question: how much do you think it will hurt our chances to play for a BCS title in '12 given that we will lose all of our starting OL in a brief span of two years-'10 to '11-and will probably be starting one or more OL from the '10 - ‘12 classes, none of whom have any D1-A PT experience yet?

There's been a lot of discussion here about what FSU's D will look like next year, e.g., how much will we improve?  Phil Steele projects FSU to have the #9 most improved scoring D: LINK


So I was wondering how this projection might translate into the 2010 Scoring D rankings.  And here's what I came up with:

1. Steele has FSU as the #9 most improved D in 2010.
2. In 2009 FSU was #94 in scoring D (30.1 points per game).*
3. North Texas improved 11 points per game from 2008 to 2009 in scoring D, which Steele says was "one of the best" in 2009.
4. Based on 1-3, it's plausible that FSU will improve between 6-7 points per game on scoring D.
5. Based on 2 & 4, it's plausible that FSU will allow between 23.1 - 24.1 points per game in 2010.
6. In 2009 the team allowing 23.1 points per game was #44 in Scoring D; and the team allowing 24.1 points per game fell between #44 and #55.
7. Based on 5 & 6, it's plausible that FSU will be somewhere between #44 and #54 in scoring D.

* I'm using non-FEI rankings, since I believe Steele does as well. 

This would be an improvement of 40-50 in scoring D.

Agree/Disagree?