Even when the Florida State football team went into halftime holding a first-half shutout Saturday afternoon, first-year defensive coordinator Adam Fuller was concerned about what he was seeing.
The defensive front wasn't generating enough pressure on Georgia Tech freshman quarterback Jeff Sims. The linebackers and defensive backs were not blanketing receivers and winning 50-50 battles. And the number of missed tackles was piling up.
While FSU maintained a 10-0 lead, Fuller knew better than anyone inside Doak Campbell Stadium that the scoreboard was slightly misleading.
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If not for a pair of blocked field goals and two interceptions deep in Florida State territory, things could have looked much worse.
"We got some red-zone stops and created some things that are always positive," Fuller said, "but no, we weren't playing good enough. We were a little bit loose with some things that we wanted to be tighter with at all different levels -- whether it was missed tackles, whether it was coverage, whether it was the rush. We weren't playing great at halftime.
"And it was a fine balance of ... 'Listen, this is going well. This is not going well. This needs to be addressed. This needs to be changed.' And then go back (in the second half) and do a better job of executing."
The second half didn't go a whole lot better -- at least not on two very important drives.
The Seminoles did drastically reduce the number of yards they surrendered -- from 269 in the first two quarters to 169 in the final two -- but FSU was unable to keep the Yellow Jackets out of the end zone on either of their first two possessions of the second half.
Tech's first drive of the third quarter covered 80 yards on 14 plays and featured four third-down conversions. Tailback Jordan Mason's 19-yard scamper around left end cut Florida State's lead to 10-7 with just over six minutes remaining in that period.
The Jackets struck much quicker on their next possession. After FSU extended its advantage to 13-7, Tech answered with an eight-play, 72-yard drive to tie the score.
Sims completed six of seven passes on that march, including a 15-yard touchdown toss to wideout Malachi Carter, who was able to beat FSU cornerback Jarrian Jones in man coverage.
The Seminoles had issues in pass coverage when playing both man and zone principles on Saturday. While making the first start of his college career, Sims completed 23 of 34 passes for 277 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions.
"With some of our zone coverages, we've got to tighten up some of the underneath things that we were doing," FSU head coach Mike Norvell said. "They did a nice job of throwing and catching in some situations. Obviously, we were able to create a couple of takeaways with those same types of coverages. So there definitely were positives.
"And they had a couple of plays where their guys did a nice of throwing and catching and putting the ball in the right place."
