Tony White went to sleep frustrated on Saturday night. Despite a 34-17 victory, there were third-down breakdowns and communication issues in Florida State’s season opener.

A rewatch on Sunday gave him encouragement in how many players performed as well as confirmation that communication issues can be resolved.

“You come back in early in the morning, and then you sit there and watch it with just a regular lens,” White said on Monday. “And when I got a chance to watch it, there’s a ton of good things. There’s stuff that we need to correct and fix. 100 percent.”

White said he was happy with what’s always the goal, stopping the run. FSU held New Mexico State to 47 yards on 23 carries. He felt FSU’s defensive front, despite just three sacks, was disruptive against a quarterback that didn’t hold on to the football that long.

New Mexico State converted 10 of 17 third-down plays, with Trey Hedden competing nine straight passes in those situations to extend drives.

White said going into the game he wanted FSU’s defense to be cognizant of passes to the outside and the Aggies’ screen game. But Hedden’s passes over the middle often caught FSU in communication issues between the nickel and safeties on third down.

“It’s one thing to communicate in practice and there’s not very many people and you can scream across two fields,” White said. “But it’s a completely different deal when you can’t talk to somebody this far away.

“The secondary, there were a bunch of different combinations of guys in there. We took Neo (Nehemiah Chandler) and moved him into the nickel. We took Ricky (Knight) and made sure he got his reps. It’s just guys being organic and working together and not seeing the same pictures. A lot of times when you put those groups together on the field, they know what each other is thinking so there’s not that much communication going on. There may be a thumb’s up or a blink.

“You put one new guy in there, and now all of a sudden, and you see it on film, you see guys turn around and like, ‘What’s going on? What’s this? What’s the check?’ And then he’s taking out the mouthpiece and the ball is snapped and now you got one half of the guys playing one thing and another side playing another thing.”

That was the case on Hedden’s touchdown throws, both of which were over the middle. For example, that issue popped up on the first touchdown.

“You pause it right before the snap and you see guys like this,” White says, looking to the side as if gesturing to another person. “Neo, he’s talking to AB (Ashlynd Barker) and then KJ (Kirkland). That middle piece we were not communicating right. Not playing the same thing.”

On the second touchdown, the Aggies went with an empty backfield. FSU blitzed and hit Hedden but Knight got beat.

“I think it’s a good thing when things like that happen,” White said. “Because now you have their attention. Not that we didn’t have it before. But you really got their attention on the little things, especially out there at DB.”

White said he saw plenty that he liked, noting in his view:

- Pressures from edge rushes from Rylan Kennedy and Jalen Anderson

- The play at linebacker from Mikai Gbayor, who missed a chunk of camp with an injury but played on Saturday and had four tackles as well as a sack

- Quindarrius Jones’ interception on the first drive

- Defensive tackle Kevin Wynn (two tackles) in his first game after slimming down to roughly 315 points

- A red-zone stop that forced New Mexico State to kick a field goal

In White’s view, as well as linebacker Chris Jones, there are enough positives as FSU goes back to work on the practice field and prepare for SMU on Labor Day.

“Defensively, I feel like we didn’t play up to our standard,” Jones said. “We just got to come out faster, be more urgent. And then clean up the details when they need to be cleaned up. … That’s going to be something that we have to work on and the leaders are going to have step up and talk about.

“It’s little details that’s messing us up. Don’t get me wrong: We won the game, but we didn’t go out there and play to our standard.”

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