Florida State coordinator Mickey Andrews met with the media earlier this week and discussed a variety of issues including his thoughts on the Rice game, dealing with all the injuries on defense, the play of freshmen like Dekoda Watson and Myron Rolle and more.

"Good to win a ballgame again. We got started a little bit slow, they came out and gave us some new stuff first. They have not been a big 21 personnel team, in fact, they hadn't run it all year and their option. We got fooled on their option pass. The cornerback didn't finish the play. He is responsible for his area of the field until he sees the block. We weren't real disciplined on the play and ended up giving up a 32-yard touchdown. Very well executed on their part, we just weren't prepared for it because we hadn't seen it. We have to be more disciplined, that is part of playing your position, taking care of your assignment and you just have got to do it. He is also responsible for a place in the crack, he just got a little to quick with it. We are a young club and we will learn from our mistakes."

"We got to play a lot of young people and that was good. They did okay, a couple of times the first group had to go in and bail them out. That is probably one of the best things the first defense did, they finished the plays and the game. They stopped Rice twice down in the red-zone without any points and that is huge when you can do that."

Mickey Andrews: Yeah. If you are missing a lot of tackles or you are busting plays you are not making progress. We are up for individual technique and improvement and it should get better as the year goes along. We had to many missed tackles and missed assignments the week before and it kept us, it was part of the reason we didn't win the football game, a big part. We reduced that some this week. Even though we had some missed tackles. I think we had 11 total which is not bad as our goal is to hold them under 10, which is what you are trying to do and we missed it by one. Overall you see progress and more importantly you see progress from young people who are getting to play a little bit more. Getting experience is the only real way you learn to play football. You can go work on the field but it is different when the band starts playing and you get people in the stands, even if it is not full.

Mickey Andrews: Yeah, he is. We started the season having to replace seven starters which we did and did a pretty effective job. Then you lose one of your best defensive lineman in the second game, then you lose your starting safety in the third game, and now you lose a guy that wasn't starting on our base defense but he was on our yardage defense and he started on just about every kicking team. He was not playing like a freshman. That will be a significant loss losing him. What it does, it gives the opportunity for someone else. Kevin (Steele) got mighty thin in the ballgame and we had to move, after (Anthony) Houllis got hurt (Darius) McClure had to be the back-up at both safeties, which he did a pretty effective job on. Then we moved a linebacker(Toddrick Verdell) back to safety, he had been a free safety and we moved him to rover and during the course of the game we had to move him back to SAM linebacker because Kevin was so thin there. Somebody will get a chance. We just have to plug them in, coach them hard, and we have a few extra days to do it in so that will be helpful.

Mickey Andrews: Well, he came in and we had him at linebacker and we couldn't keep our defensive ends well because they were missing a lot of practice time and trying to play which is hard, very difficult to do. Then we had to move an end to tackle(Alex Boston), which made things even shorter there at defensive end so we talked to him about moving there. He said he would do anything to help the team. Kevin felt like he was going to be a very good linebacker and that he just needed time to learn the scheme and whatever but we moved him to defensive end and we worked both he and, we actually worked he and Lawrence Timmons, at defensive end for some of our 3-4 package and he was making good progress. He got to play a lot and made some nice plays in the game. I think he had a sack and tackles. He is little bit, you would like to have them a little bigger, a little stronger, at that position but we can grow him a little bit later. The thing about him is that he can run and that he has range and that helps him to be a better defensive player if you are disciplined with it.

Mickey Andrews: Yeah, we have quite a few banged up. Tony (Carter) got banged up a little bit. McClure got hurt a little bit. In the secondary we have some people a little bummed up and then up-front as well. We have some people that didn't get to play so hopefully we will have a chance to get some of those guys well plus we can make some progress where there are people that are going to need to fill in some new positions. We are going to have to find a way to continue to improve during this time. We cannot just rest people, we have to get better. We are not where we want to be yet.

Mickey Andrews: We will try not to. We may have to but at this point, no.

Mickey Andrews: Yes.

Mickey Andrews: Well we worked McClure there, plus we have Korn-dog, (Mikhal) Kornegay, he played about nine or 10 plays in the game in addition to all of his kicking stuff. We will just go with that, we are just thin, very thin at some positions.

Mickey Andrews: Yeah, well, we didn't want to do it to begin with but we let our better judgment fall for his desire to have an opportunity. He did a good job when he was there but we are probably going to have to limit his tries as a punt returner because he is such a value to us at cornerback.

Mickey Andrews: Yeah, we said going in that we were going to try to look at as many guys as we could as a punt returner. I think Chris (Davis) would be okay but this is just his first real time to do them and a lot of it. He had a couple things, the drop, and he has made a couple of judgment errors. He can learn from that and he can be a very valuable returner but we wanted to open it up and see if we saw something from the other guys and we didn't really have a whole lot of opportunities because we didn't get the ball kicked where we could have an opportunity to run it back. We had several fair catches and a couple of times we didn't hold our bullets up well enough to have a chance to advance the ball.

Mickey Andrews: We will take a look in practice. I don't know if that is something we would do against NC State. We will probably limit it on who it is going to be rather than having a tryout in the game.

Mickey Andrews: They have beaten us too many times the last few years. It is one of those deals where you have to be prepared to play your best because you got to anticipate they will play their best. They looked pretty good the way they finished the ballgame up against Boston College.

Mickey Andrews: It was a very nice start for his first time actually starting a ballgame and to get as many plays as he did. He was a little bit anxious early. He didn't do a couple things early (that he did) later on in the game when he got comfortable he was executing a little bit better. He is one of the guys you would expect to continue to improve as he gets more reps.

Mickey Andrews: Yea. Part of that is just the availability of some of the guys to practice. It's hard to perform in games when you don't get to practice all the time. When you injured you can't help it so it's going to limit your number of reps in practice. It's hard for that not to limit your performance in a game.

Mickey Andrews: It's the first time he's played college football so he's still in the process of learning our defense and he's still learning how to play at this speed, the speed of the game. Here we are going into our fifth ballgame and we look to see more production from some of our guys at those positions. I think that will come as they get more work and stay healthy.

Mickey Andrews: It was a little bit of both. One guy didn't practice so he didn't deserve to start. Who starts next Thursday week will be who goes out and prepares the best and shows us that they are ready to be the starter. That's the challenge that we give them every day. We are looking for the 11 best on Tuesday and Wednesday and all the way up to game time. Certainly the game has an effect on how we evaluate them. Some of our young guys are still a little cautious still and that's part of the learning process. The thing that we are trying to do is get them to turn loose and play football. You are going to make some mistakes but just don't feel your way around. You can do that over on the bench. When we put you out there we expect you to turn loose, play hard, play smart and fast.

Mickey Andrews: I talked to him today. The thing we are doing is trying to get him ready. He's learning and he's picking it up. He made progress last week and he'll continue. I told him go don't out there and practice like you are redshirting, practice like you are going to play this week. That's what we tell all of our guys. If you do, whether you play or not, you are lot further along than you would if you sit and say 'I'll wait until next year' or 'I'll wait until the spring.' We've got high expectations. He's going to be an outstanding player, there's no doubt in our mind. We will treat him like any other guy - we will try not to put him out there before we know and they know - you can see it in their eyes when you know that they are ready. We've got so many kids hurt on the kicking team that we may have to play some guys strictly for the kicking game until they can learn their position well enough.

Mickey Andrews: That could possibly be it. I think sometimes you are thrown in a lot faster pace, a totally different scheme which is nothing even remotely close to what you did in high school. It takes time to pick it up. It has nothing to do with intelligence, it has to do with putting yourself in position so that you know that you can prevent long plays and also make plays.

How much does it play into your preparation for NC State knowing that you are going against a Chuck Amato coached team?

Mickey Andrews: That part doesn't enter into it. It is just about who can get their teams…the team that goes out there and plays the hardest and makes plays and hopefully you can make some adjustments to help the kids during the process. I don't see (it being a game versus an ex-FSU assistant) as being a factor really.

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