I should've clarified further (word counts and such): Clawson went into pretty good detail on the Xs and Os of State's defense, which is basically a 3-3-5 a la the Rich Rod defense.
Clawson:
They’ve changed their defense. That, if somebody had their playbook [insert Wakeyleaks chuckles here], there’s very few calls that they have in their defense that were similar to a year ago. Some of the coverage stuff is a little similar, but it’s just a completely new defense. And that’s the 3-3 stack system that West Virginia ran with Rich Rodriguez and then West Virginia kept it when they took it to Michigan and then they ran it at Arizona.
Now, what’s ironic is for Florida State, all we did was prepare for okie and they came out and played us in four-down.
So a lot of the things that we thought we would end up doing against Florida State, we had worked on – N.C. State’s spacing is a little bit different at the second level, but it’s still guard-uncovered defense a lot of the time.
I asked a follow-up about how fresh the game plan for FSU stays 2-3 weeks after preparing for it.
Clawson:
Pretty fresh. And we prepare for it in preseason camp, nowadays a lot of people will run that defense as their nickel defense or their third-down defense. There’s times that we’ve run versions of it.
It’s not as radical of playing a spread team and then playing a wishbone team. But it’s different. To play well on the O-line, guys have to be on the same page and they have to know where their combinations are going to and where the double teams are working to and when you have something that you just haven’t worked against, you have to get familiar with it.
Also: State's depth chart lists 12 defensive positions so if that's the case then damn, how are they not the best team in the country?!?!
