Alex Atkins explains value of rotating offensive line in spring

As Florida State‘s spring practice gets deeper and deeper, more guys are getting their shot to work in the trenches against the better units on the other side. That’s the point of spring ball, a rotating offensive line, for offensive coordinator Alex Atkins.

He wants to be able to see how guys who might be poised for a move up the depth chart actually handle themselves against the starters.

“Continuity is always a big thing with O-line, but that’s not the focus in the spring,” Atkins explained. “You never have a set of five that’s going out there all the time. There’s a different guy in there. It might be, ‘Hey, you go with the ones this time, you go with the twos, you go with the threes,’ so it’s more creating matchups with competition like going against the one D-line, two D-line, three D-line.

“It’s different. You might put a guy in there that’s doing really well with the three D-line, like let me see what you’re going to do versus the two D-line, let me see what you’re going to do against the ones and how that correlates.”

Atkins has been pleased with how his guys are handling the setup of spring football practice so far.

They’ve been receptive to the rotation onto different units.

“Continuity is not the focus at the moment, it’s more the improvement and the evaluation,” Atkins said. “But I think that overall the things we’re asking them to do they’re giving great attention to. And that’s the fun part about practice is we’re not trying to find the best situation, we’re trying to see how you handle the situation that you’re in at the moment. Which is good at building that improvement.”

One of the things that Atkins has been most pleased with this spring is the communication between the defensive line and the rotating offensive line.

A number of players have been communicating to help the other side out, the kind of team-building you don’t always see when things are live in the spring and one side is tasked with beating out the other.

“It’s always good because competition always brings the best out of you. But what’s even better is the relationships that they have with him, giving them their deficiencies,” Atkins said. “I walk in and Julian (Armella‘s) talking to Patrick Payton and they’re going through what moves they do and why they do this and why you took that step. So they’re growing and getting each other better. Whenever you talk about improvement the D-line doesn’t improve unless we can block them. We don’t improve unless we can block them. So it’s a totality of both rooms pushing each other to get better and keep striving and learning each other’s tendencies.”

Armella is one younger player that is improving quickly this spring, as is Qae’Shon Sapp.

“From Julian, he’s doing a really good job of getting cerebral,” Atkins said. “Julian loves effort, he loves running, going hard, he likes going out there taking a bunch of reps. He has to hone in on the other small pieces of the game, seeing the pressure and understanding what techniques to use is the three-technique is wide. He’s starting to kind of dial into those kind of things and really grow from that. Sapp’s playing a bunch of center, so we’re developing him where he primarily played guard. So now he’s learning that position which comes with a lot, controlling both sides. Those young guys it’s exciting to see how far they’re coming.”

The other benefit the Florida State offensive line has is something Atkins has grown to count on over the years.

The defensive line is usually really, really good, giving the rotating offensive line a great set of looks in the spring.

“That’s been a constant at Florida State,” Atkins said. “When I got back here in 2020 it was going against a defensive front, ’21 defensive front. That’s never going to change here at Florida State because of the consistency of that position.”