Alex Atkins offers insight into FSU offense

Florida State offensive coordinator Alex Atkins spoke with the media after practice on Tuesday ahead of the Seminoles’ ACC opener against the Louisville Cardinals this Friday. Atkins touched on a lot of different subjects and previewed his upcoming opponent.

Louisville has given up over 200 rushing yards per game this season and coach Atkins understands that it is tough to grade a defense with such a small sample size but admitted that the Cardinals will have FSU’s three running backs on their minds.

“I think struggle is a tough word going into two games. I mean, historically they’ve done a great job against the run, you know, coach Brown does a good job of playing the run, getting those hats down there and they tackle well, you know, I think they got a couple of new guys, you know, and with the limitation in practice sometimes, you know, tackling but they look, they’ve improved greatly from game one to two so I expect them to get that problem fixed against us pretty quickly.”

Florida State won against the LSU Tigers before their bye week last week in an emotional down-to-the-wire showdown that ended in a blocked extra point attempt for the ‘Noles. Atkins said that it was the look in the team’s eyes that looked like they were ready to win but added that they still have a lot of mistakes to clean up.

“Yeah, of course everything is critical, you know, the emotion that comes from a win or loss but the reality is the reality. We still got stuff to clean up whether you win or lose and we had a bunch so it’s just more of the mentality to come back to work, correct mistakes you know, you got to get better and keep stressing so you playing the best ball as the season go along so that’s the goal, just get the correct get the corrections and play your best ball as we progress through the season and become a more experienced group.”

He also took note of the fact he liked the team's emotional state:

“What I did like was the fight, you know, I’ve been on that sideline a couple times and seen those eyes and they looked not the way they need to look in those kind of games and I thought, you know, the eyes look like they needed to look for us to go out there and keep swinging. So, you know, if we went to overtime, you know, same deal like I thought our guys were locked in and ready to do whatever we had to do”

Atkin’s full interview can be seen below: