watch some film on our line before they start accusing a player of taking a play off. He did exactly what he was supposed to do.

On plays where we are running a hard count (snap the ball on the QB’s 3rd signal, for example), the center can snap the ball early if he sees the defender jump into the neutral zone. The other linemen are coached to not move until the QB’s signal, or the ref’s whistle, whichever comes first. From watching this through the season, it appears that other than Beau, they all stay in stance until the QB comes over to release them, or the play is whistled dead.

On this play, it appears that McMahon snapped it early (whether by mistake OR thinking he had a player offside), since the entire line hesitated coming up. Since they released from their stance (except Sanders), you can tell they were watching the ball, but it appears that they were expecting a hard count. I’m guessing that they couldn’t hear a damn thing on that play, and thought they missed it.

Hard to tell exactly what happened here. The linemen released, which you wouldn’t expect for a hard count, but came up slow, which you wouldn’t expect for a soft count (i.e. everyone moves on the snap). This would indicate that there was some major confusion, probably due to noise.

Would love to hear from someone who played O-line as to what they see though.

on ESPN and Yahoo’s front page. In case you haven’t noticed though, ESPN and Yahoo! are Gator lovers and also think we’ve done Bobby wrong in some way and are always looking for shots to take at FSU. I just wish Trickett would come out in defense of his linemen. I honestly don’t think Sanders did anything wrong on this play because after the play, nobody seemed to say anything to him about it. i think the ref just missed the offside call on Dunlap.

A lineman fails to block but Manuel runs for 9 yards? What’s the problem?