Monday Practice Report: Preparing for Maryland

• Florida State held its usual Monday practice to start its week of preparation for the 7 p.m. contest at Maryland on ESPN2.

• Kickoff for the November 4th game between Florida State and Virginia was set for noon. The game will be carried on the ACC's Lincoln-Financial Services/Raycom television network.

• Florida State alumni and former roommates Burt Reynolds and Lee Corso will be featured in a segment on the HBO series "REAL SPORTS WITH BRYANT GUMBEL" when the show goes behind the scenes with ESPN's "College Gameday". The show will air Tuesday, October 31, at 10 p.m. (ET/PT).

• The Seminoles worked out in shorts and helmets for ten periods on Monday evening, starting with agility drills before going into special teams and individual position drills.

• Most of periods were spent with the offense and defense working against the scout teams.

• Quarterback Drew Weatherford hit Joslin Shaw for a 25 yard pass and Xavier Lee completed a pair of passes to Preston Parker

• Florida State will be back on the practice Tuesday afternoon.

QUOTES
Head Coach Bobby Bowden
(On the unity council meeting): "I met with our unity council today just to be sure that everything is okay and let them know where we stand. We've lost three ball games in the final minute we easily could have won. I like they way they've kept fighting and I told them not to hang their heads.

(On Monday's practice): "We were talking and the coaches were really surprised with the enthusiasm they came out with tonight, but it's been like that all year. This team has worked just about as hard as any team we've had here."

Quarterback Drew Weatherford
(On the unity council meeting) "We just had a meeting with Coach Bowden. He was just telling us that we have the rest of the season to look forward to, and we have a lot of young guys. We needed not to pay attention to what has happened in the past, but look forward to the future."

(On moving on): "We're going to have to; we can't worry about what happened last week, because it might happen again if we don't watch ourselves. You have to take it a game at a time."

(On the offensive performance) "I thought we executed well for 80% of the game, but it's not for consistent drives. We played good for five or six downs, and then we have two or three where we wouldn't and we have to punt the ball. We gave them as an offense 14 points through an interception and a fumble by Caz that ended up on the one yard line. Penalties also hurt us a lot; we're just making too many mistakes to beat good teams like Boston College, Clemson and NC State."

(On the interception just before halftime): "They had been playing quarters throughout the day, with the safety and corner playing about eight to ten yards deep. What they did on the snap was rolled down. On the snap, it was low and to the right, and I didn't even get a chance to look. But I was being decisive and I thought that they were going to do that they had done previously and not let Greg Carr beat them down the field. I was trying to be decisive and thrown the ball on a simple hitch route, and the defender made a good play. I wish I could have taken the play back because I didn't see what the defense had done."

Offensive Coordinator Jeff Bowden
(On bouncing back): "Well, I specifically think back to my brother calling me three years ago and asking me `what do you say?' Well, it now becomes a six game season and there is a lot of pride at stake. The one thing is that we are playing enough young kids that this is where you find out what they are made of and you find out if they will suck it up. We have a lot to play for right now. Pride happens to be a big part of it. To me it is a six game season and it is that simple, you approach it that way."

(On Maryland): "Right now we are trying to iron out all of their headaches. If I were to give you from a coverage standpoint they are very similar to Boston College. I am not sure their corners might not be a little better but they are definitely a little more physical. They will come up and play a little bit of bump and run, not a big dose of it, but for the most part they want to keep everything underneath. Now they are much more multiple up-front than Boston College was, there is a lot more twisting, a lot more stunting, and a lot more blitzing.

"They are a three down team so you are not sure where they are coming from ... they are much more confusing to your offensive line. People have run on them. A lot of what I have seen, you watch Georgia Tech and there is some hidden rushing yardage when you talk about (Reggie) Ball pulling that ball down and running like he does. Even the quarterback for Virginia, we were studying that game a little bit, he had some pretty big runs. He had about a 30 yard quarterback draw that scored for them."

Defensive Coordinator Mickey Andrews
(On the defensive performance): "When you go back and look at the game and the way that things happened we were pleased with the fight and the effort of our guys and defense for the most part. We gave up some plays that naturally that had we made rather than given up would have helped with the cause of the game. I would have liked to see us make that goal line stand. It's pretty tough defending a one yard field, it's not impossible, but it's pretty difficult, and we thought we had his stopped on second down, but he ended up sticking the ball across the goal line and they ended up getting points. We gave up seven points in the second quarter, and we gave up three points in the third quarter. We started pretty good and finished pretty good."

(On field position): "Field position is a something that is really critical in football and the thing that you try to do is shorted the field for your offense. You create field position basically three ways, with turnovers; we got an intercept and a fumble. We try to get three turnovers per game, and we were just short of that. You do it with fourth down stops. We stopped them at the end of the game when they gave us the safety on fourth down. Then third down stops; you force them to kick the ball, and you try to use your kicking team to add yardage as well. We stopped them eight out of 11 times on third down, we gave up two third and long plays, but the plays went for 44 and 48 yards. We had one third and one and we lost it. But the thing you look at is that we did some things that gave us a chance to win the game. But we needed another turnover, we needed a goal line stop, and we needed to stop the two long plays."

(On mistakes and holding Boston College's running attack): "You look at it from an overall standpoint, and we gave up 60 yards rushing, which is half of their normal average. That was something that really concerned us with four true freshman going into the game, we weren't sure if they could hold their gaps. For the most part, we did an outstanding job of that. On one long pass, we had a couple busts, we had a bust on coverage, and we had a bust on containment. Usually two busts on the same play does not result in a positive outcome, and we just got out thought on another one. Those are things we feel like we can correct, you just can't put yourself in a position that you can't correct, and then you have to finish like crazy."