Jimbo Says Drew Is The Man

Excerpts of Jimbo Fisher's media conference. It is absolutely surprising to me that these coaches are so publicly critical of Lee. Now it seems that Jimbo Fisher is saying that Drew Weatherford is the next Heisman trophy winner at FSU.

Q: Talk about the decision.

JF: One, I think Drew's come back the last week and a half and been practicing better. He's really been into it and really done a good job on the side. We talked with Xavier and I talked with him today. We went through the mistakes, talked about the good things and bad things. We tried to get his feet back on the ground and take a little pressure off him for a minute and get him back to playing ball. Like I told him, it's not like he's out of the picture. He's going to be preparing like he's playing. We thought we'd start with Drew and take a little pressure off of him.

Q: Will you try to get Xavier in there regardless of what Drew is doing?

JF: No, it's Drew's game. I think that when you start going in saying those things, you've got to go by the flow and the momentum of the game and how you're doing and how that goes.

Q: What have you seen differently, and maybe it's not just what you've seen in Drew practicing in the last couple of weeks, that we're going to see something different with the offense moving with consistency.

JF: Well, I think as we keep getting the running game going a little better, which I think we did in the last game, it's always going to help the quarterback, whoever the quarterback is. So we've got to keep continuing to do that and, in the beginning the pressure, they've already been through that. So let's relax and go play and I think I've seen it in practice. I think he's back to joking and having fun and having fun playing again. Sometimes we make it so hard, we make it so outcome-oriented, that sometimes it's not that fun to play. When you lose that part of it, you never have that success, and I think he's getting that back.

Q: Is your sense they will respond to Drew.

JF: Yeah. If they don't after watching that guy on the sidelines the last four weeks being as big a team guy as we've got. When Xavier throws something who's the first guy to greet him when he comes out. He has shown a great maturity and a great team player. You want your quarterback to be a team player. He hasn't been playing and he's been FSU all the way.

Q: When you went away from Drew the rest of the offense wasn't functioning and you needed somebody who was more mobile. Are you confident the rest of the offense is functioning now?

JF: I think it is functioning better now. I think we've gotten a better feel and hopefully we'll see when we get out there and he's had his chances. We still rotate him with the ones during practice and when he got in we functioned well and move well against our practice and did some thing during live drills. He did a pretty good job.