FSU Seminoles

Each season brings with it new expectations, and a handful of Seminoles will bear the brunt of the pressure to perform in 2013. We're counting down the top 10 FSU players being counted on the most to help the Seminoles live up to expectations.

No. 5: LB Christian Jones

2012 performance: After switching from strongside to weakside linebacker before the season, 2012 figured to be a breakout performance for Jones. In the end, it turned out to be a big step forward, but it wasn't quite a star turn for the immensely talented Jones. He led the Seminoles in tackles with 95 (including seven for a loss) and recovered two fumbles, including one in the end zone for a score against USF. And while Jones was active on defense throughout the season, part of his limited overall numbers came from a scheme that emphasized the defensive line.

Pressure point: If Jones wasn't the centerpiece of the defensive scheme a year ago, that should change this season under new coordinator Jeremy Pruitt. This spring, Pruitt had Jones lining up nearly everywhere -- in coverage, playing the run, rushing the passer with his hand on the ground. Jones may be one of FSU's best overall athletes, and Pruitt seems giddy at the possibilities that offers, but that also means the senior will be picking up a hefty chunk of responsibility -- particularly considering the completely revamped defensive front. Add in the potential for Jones to dramatically improve his NFL stock, and there's a lot riding on this season.

If he succeeds: The sky is the limit, really. Jones has the talent to be one of the ACC's most prolific defenders, and a 100-tackle season seems a good starting point. But it's not just the tackles that could turn Jones into a difference-maker this season. He's capable of so much more, and Pruitt appears ready to open up the playbook. If all goes well, Jones will anchor a linebacking corps that figures to be a strength of the defense, help to maintain FSU's production against the run and push himself into the discussion as a first-round pick in next year's NFL draft.

If he fails: It's hard to envision a scenario in which Jones is an all-out failure this year, short of a significant injury. If that scenario unfolds, it's as close to a doomsday scenario as FSU's defense gets. There simply isn't another player experienced enough to take over. But the Seminoles would prefer not to imagine that possibility for now, meaning the bigger question is what constitutes success for Jones this year. He chose to return to school after being projected as a mid-round selection had he headed to the NFL, and he's got his sights set on upping his stock dramatically. To do so, he'll need to have a bigger impact on a more consistent basis. If he doesn't, much of the aggressive scheme Pruitt has planned could fall apart, and Jones' own future gets a bit murkier.

Projection: Triple-figure tackle numbers look like the starting point for Jones this year, and it's certainly an achievable goal. But more than that, Jones should be more of a factor rushing the quarterback, too. The biggest gray areas at this point surround how Jones will hold up in coverage -- there were occasional struggles in 2012 in that area -- and whether he and fellow linebacker Telvin Smith can help pick up enough of the slack against the run to overcome the loss of so many big playmakers on the line. With Jones' talent and Pruitt's approach, though, it seems a safe bet a big season is in store.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- By any significant measure, the difference between Timmy Jernigan's role as a reserve the past two seasons and the starting job that awaits him in 2013 shouldn't be a major overhaul.

Jernigan was already on the field for a majority of snaps throughout most games, and his impact on the defensive line already included more tackles than any other FSU interior lineman in 2012. Still, there's something about hearing his name announced before each game and knowing he's officially secured the job of starter on a unit that's been among the best in the nation in recent years that Jernigan relishes.

"I've been waiting a long time," he said. "So I'm really excited about it."

Jernigan's enthusiasm isn't entirely inflated either. Sure, his playing time isn't likely to shift dramatically, and he's already proven he's capable of handling a sizable role on the defense. But what's truly different for the junior defensive tackle in 2013 isn't about reps or tackles but about his place in the hierarchy of the defense.

For the past two seasons, FSU's line has been the foundation of its defensive scheme. The unit has helped the Seminoles finish in the top three in the nation stopping the run in both 2011 and 2012, and last month, it sent five players on to the NFL, including all of last year's starters.

That, of course, means a massive overhaul for the unit, but thanks to Jernigan's presence -- along with potential breakout stars like Mario Edwards Jr. and Eddie Goldman -- the expectations haven't dipped much. And that's a burden Jernigan hadn't been asked to carry before.

"I feel like it's my D-line now," Jernigan said. "I'm trying to be a leader."

When it comes to production, there's little reason to question Jernigan's ability to handle a bigger share of the spotlight. As a reserve the past two seasons, he's racked up 76 tackles, including 14 for a loss, and four sacks. Despite playing behind Anthony McCloud and Everett Dawkins -- both in NFL camps now -- Jernigan established himself as a star, and he's already currying attention as a potential first-round selection in next year's draft.

That attention is nice, he admits, but his bigger role in 2013 isn't about burnishing his resume for the next level.

"It inspired me to work even harder toward what I want," Jernigan said. "I'm not really worried about the NFL or anything like that because there's so much more I feel like I have to do here in Tallahassee. I'll worry about that when it's time."

What Jernigan needs to do this season isn't simply a repeat of past performance either.

Jimbo Fisher has been quick to shrug off concerns about the massive changes on the defensive line, noting that Jernigan and Demonte McAllister were already FSU's most productive tackles, but it's hard to ignore the notion that life gets more difficult without established talent surrounding them.

That means Jernigan has to pick up the slack as the centerpiece of the line and help bring along the younger talent alongside him.

Before an ankle injury sidelined him midway through the spring, Jernigan was taking reps alongside a bevy of potential partners on the line, from veterans like Jacobbi McDaniel and Giorgio Newberry to youngsters like Edwards and Goldman. The rotations, he expects, will continue well into the fall, but he admits it's hard not to be impressed by the potential of some of the young guns.

"I like what they're doing because they're asking questions, they're very humble," Jernigan said. "They understand we have all the talent in the world up front but the biggest thing is we've got to get everything going. Those guys are going to be just fine. It's just a matter of understanding what you're doing. Not understanding slows you down, but those guys are going to be just fine."

Of course, Jernigan is dealing with a bit of a learning curve, too. While his position group was spared in the overhaul of FSU's coaching staff this offseason, the new, aggressive schemes being implemented by defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt have added some wrinkles to what had been a relatively straightforward approach.

But like the move from reserve to starter, Jernigan sees the changes as an opportunity to impress.

"That's what I like," Jernigan said. "I like to get off the ball and attack blockers rather than absorb them. It's going to be a positive. I'm very excited about it."

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Nothing was going to change. That was Jimbo Fisher's story to start the spring, regardless of the massive overhaul of his defensive coaching staff.

Sure, new coordinator Jeremy Pruitt would bring a few new wrinkles from his old stomping grounds at Alabama, but in the big picture, Fisher assured, Florida State's defense would still look much as it did for the past three seasons under Mark Stoops.

By the end of the spring, however, it was clear Fisher had downplayed the impact his new coaches would have. The Seminoles spent weeks watching tape of the Crimson Tide. Pruitt installed new verbiage, new calls, new schemes and a whole lot of new blitz packages. And when a rather vanilla spring game ended, even Fisher was ready to ratchet up the expectations.

"You ain't seen blitzes yet," Fisher said.

If the quarterback battle was all the buzz among Florida State fans this spring, it's the defense that created the most excitement inside the locker room. Pruitt's approach completely restructured the simplified scheme Stoops had used with such success the past three seasons, and that meant new opportunities for the Seminoles' defenders and plenty of confusion for the offense.

The only problem was that FSU had just four weeks to master it before the long summer began.

"That's the hardest part, because at some point we were trying to relate last year's calls to this year's calls, and you really can't do that," safety Terrence Brooks said. "You've got to forget all that. It's learning a whole new defense."

The large-scale changes were bound to occur given the three new coaches on defense. But shaking things up also brings risk.

Stoops' unit was immensely successful, finishing second in total defense in 2012 and fourth in 2011. And the beauty of Stoops' approach was in its simplicity. He asked his defensive backs to cover, asked his linebackers to stop the run and asked his front four to generate pressure. Blitzes were the exception, not the rule.

"Stoops made it really, really simple," Brooks said. "I feel like he was a genius for that, getting the defense to be that good, but so simple."

Maintaining that simplicity might have been difficult regardless of the coaching changes, though. With the loss of five defensive linemen and one of the nation's top cornerbacks to the NFL, changes were inevitable. Ends Bjoern Werner and Cornellius Carradine had been immensely successful in generating pressure without blitzing, but that's a luxury Pruitt won't get a chance to enjoy.

Instead, Pruitt's scheme takes some of the responsibility away from the defensive front and opens up the game plan for the athletes off the line of scrimmage -- and that's an exciting proposition for players such as new starting safety Karlos Williams.

"I feel like we will be way more aggressive than we have been because we're just doing a lot more -- we're a lot more active," Williams said. "But you all can watch it and see what happens."

Blitzes come from all over the field, and Pruitt has created dozens of new looks. Linebackers creep up to the line of scrimmage, ends drop into coverage, defensive backs are blitzing routinely. It's chaos for the offense -- but it's not entirely simple for the defense, either.

"We all felt overwhelmed at some point, but all those little things and calls, it really helps a lot because it gives us a chance to make so many more plays," Brooks said. "It's amazing to see on film how Alabama did it. They had guys dropping into coverage, all the different calls they had, but they all made a lot of plays off those little calls."

But picking up all those new calls was crucial. As a new crop of freshmen arrive this summer and a handful of veterans return from injuries, it will be the responsibility of FSU's veteran defenders to pass along what they learned from this spring's four-week crash course.

Truth be told, linebacker Christian Jones said, they could've used a few more weeks to prepare. But all things considered, Jones is confident the summer will prove to be a productive time even without Pruitt's immediate oversight.

"This spring, we pretty much put in the whole playbook," Jones said. "The guys have done a pretty good job of picking it all up, but it's a lot of stuff. It's a lot of checks, change the fronts a lot."

The new defense presents some pressure, but Jones isn't complaining. It might take a while longer to get everyone on the same page, but when it all comes together, this new defense could be awfully fun to watch.

"It's spring, so they've got to throw all that stuff in so we can know it in the fall," Jones said. "Once we get to the fall and can game plan, I think we'll have a real scary defense."

Florida State linebacker Christian Jones may have led his team with 95 tackles last season, but there is one line on his stat sheet that stood out to him even more.

A big fat zero next to sacks.

Though the Seminoles racked up 36 total sacks as a team last year, 33 of them came from the defensive line. But the expectation around Tallahassee is that will change this upcoming season with Jeremy Pruitt taking over the defense. We have heard all spring about how he plans to use more blitzes, while getting his linebackers more aggressively involved.

Jones is thrilled.

"Last year, we didn’t have to blitz that much because we had a good D-line," he said in a recent interview. "Now, we have tons of blitzes, and we're just trying to get that stuff down and trying to learn it all. Overall, I’m for it because it allows us to make more plays and show everybody else our versatility and what we can do. We’re just ready to get it all done so we can go stop people."

For Jones, the addition to this part of his game is something he wants, especially since he decided to come back to school. Jones was on the fence about whether he should come back, after being given a third- or fourth-round draft grade. With Pruitt on board, he will be able to show NFL scouts and coaches that he can do more than just make the routine tackle.

In his career, Jones has six total sacks. He wants more in 2013 -- his final season.

"It kind of (stinks) not be able to have any sacks," Jones said. "That’s something coming out of high school I knew I was able to do. Not having sacks, there were definitely people wondering, 'Can you do that?' Yeah, I’ve been doing that since I was a kid. It’s going to be cool to show people that we have great athletes and I can do all that stuff."

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Spring practice arrived with some significant questions, and it ended with at least a slightly clearer indication of some answers. This week, we'll take a look at five of the biggest question marks of the spring and decipher what we learned and how much further the Seminoles have to go before the season kicks off.

Next up: The defensive scheme

The question: How much would Jeremy Pruitt's arrival as Florida State's new defensive coordinator impact a unit that has been among the best in the country the past two seasons under Mark Stoops?

The possibilities: Certainly Pruitt -- along with two other new faces on the defensive coaching staff -- could have made only minor tweaks as they worked with personnel recruited by the previous regime. Or he could have taken everything he learned at Alabama and made a sweeping overhaul, installing a 3-4 base defense and churning out a relatively unrecognizable product. The upside to Florida State's array of versatile defenders was that Pruitt had a malleable product to work with.

What we learned this spring: The spring opened with Jimbo Fisher promising little in the way of a dramatic overhaul to the defense, but of course, he was playing coy. It didn't take long for the players to begin reporting some sweeping changes.

For what it's worth, most players argue, as Fisher has, that the basics of the defense haven't change, only the terminology. But that's really just arguing semantics. The fact is, Pruitt has brought with him a real philosophical change, even if the base defense still has four down linemen.

Where Stoops' group tended to play it safe, relying on pressure from the front four and exceptional coverage from its secondary, Pruitt clearly enjoys living more dangerously. There's motion before the snap. There's multiple looks from the same personnel. There's blitzing -- a lot of blitzing.

"It gives us a chance to make plays," safety Terrence Brooks said. "It's a very complex defense, but it's really good for us. It mixes a lot of things up and it confuses the quarterback a lot."

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Spring practice arrived with some significant questions, and it ended with at least a slightly clearer indication of some answers. This week, we'll take a look at five of the biggest question marks of the spring and decipher what we learned and how much further the Seminoles have to go before the season kicks off.

Next up: The defensive line

The question: Five former starters are gone, likely all headed to the NFL, so what will become of Florida State's once-vaunted defensive line without Bjoern Werner, Cornellius Carradine and Co.?

The possibilities: The interior of the line appears to be in good hands with Timmy Jernigan stepping into a starting role, freshman Eddie Goldman getting a crack at a bigger job, and veterans like Demonte McAllister and Jacobbi McDaniel around to provide stability. On the edge, there are bigger questions as Mario Edwards Jr. looks to live up to his recruiting hype, Dan Hicks returns to defense, and Giorgio Newberry and Chris Casher work to establish themselves.

What we learned this spring: Perhaps the biggest lesson of the spring wasn't about who would fill the void on the defensive line but rather how new coordinator Jeremy Pruitt planned to scheme around it.

It's not that the pass-rush responsibilities will be shifted completely away from the defensive ends, and technically speaking, FSU isn't moving toward the 3-4 base defense Pruitt ran at Alabama, but there have clearly been some marked changes to the scheme.

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- It's tough to say with any level of certainty just how many sacks Florida State's defense would have recorded if Saturday's spring game was played under true game conditions, but even if the quarterbacks couldn't get hit, Jeremy Pruitt's new-look defense had a strong showing.

Overall, the two teams recorded nine sacks in Saturday's scrimmage, led by defensive tackle Nile Lawrence-Stample's 3.5, which would've been impressive under any circumstances. But as Jimbo Fisher pointed out after the game, those numbers came from a relatively vanilla scheme.

"You ain't seen blitzes yet," Fisher said with a grin.

In his first year as Florida State's defensive coordinator, Pruitt has installed an aggressive style that promises to offer a myriad of looks designed to get after the quarterback.

Saturday's spring game wasn't exactly a sneak peak, however, with a number of key defensive starters out with injuries and only a watered-down version of Pruitt's game plan implemented. But the past four weeks have been eye-opening, linebacker Christian Jones said, and there's ample reason for excitement.

"This spring, we pretty much put in the whole playbook, and we just ran a little sample of it," Jones said. "We've done a pretty good job of picking it all up, but it's a lot of stuff, a lot of checks, change the fronts, but we've done a good job of handling all that. Once we get into the fall and can game plan, I think we're going to have a real scary defense."

It wasn't all smooth sailing for the defense Saturday, as all four of Florida State's quarterbacks managed at least one touchdown pass, but there was plenty of room for optimism. Lamarcus Brutus and Karlos Williams both intercepted passes, and P.J. Williams came up with a pick of a Jacob Coker throw that he returned for a touchdown.

"I thought the defense played well," Fisher said. "I'm very pleased with the way they're playing."

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Florida State opened the spring with more significant questions looming over the team than in any season since Jimbo Fisher took over as head coach. The past four weeks certainly haven't provided answers for them all -- including some of the most hotly debated -- but there have been some clues as to what the Seminoles will look like in the fall.

The defensive scheme: Fisher opened spring by assuring there would be few changes on defense despite three new coaches, including a new coordinator. It didn't take long to see he was bluffing. Jeremy Pruitt had players watching game film of his old Alabama teams during the offseason, and he's installed an aggressive new scheme that includes shifting players around, dropping linemen into coverage, bringing linebackers to the line of scrimmage, and blitzing early and often. "I love this defense," safety Terrence Brooks said. "It's amazing. A lot more blitzing, a lot more chances to make plays, moving guys around. Everybody's learning but we're picking it up every day and it's getting a lot better."

The right tackle job: Fisher might never offer Bobby Hart a full-fledged endorsement after the young lineman squandered his starting job with a lackadaisical approach last spring, but there was clear improvement for Hart this time around, and he managed to hold on to his spot atop the depth chart throughout. Moving Bryan Stork to right tackle and giving Austin Barron the starting job at center remains a possibility -- or a threat, depending on how much of the debate is based around motivating Hart -- but for now, Hart looks to be on solid ground.

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