The Failure of Florida State
THE FAILURE OF FLORIDA STATE – Last year, Florida State was riding high. Mike Norvell seemed to have everything figured out, with the Seminoles running through the ACC for a perfect season. The Seminoles got robbed by the selection committee, and then saw their third string get hammered by Georgia, but nobody thought that meant anything. Florida State seemed to have all the pieces in place to make another run the next year.
Instead, it’s been one failure after another in Tallahassee.
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Florida State is 1-6, and for the first time in history, the Seminoles have lost to Duke in football. The Blue Devils are a respectable 6-1, but the notion that they were going to beat Florida State in football before the season was preposterous. And given how much Florida State spends on football, there’s a strong case that the Seminoles should never lose to Duke. But it happened, and worse, the Blue Devils were giving points. That’s right: things have gotten so bad in Tallahassee that a first-ever loss to Duke didn’t even qualify as an upset.
Where has it all gone wrong for the Seminoles? Here’s a dive into what might be the worst FSU team in 50 years.
DJ Uiagalelei and the Ground Game
Pinning the blame on DJ Uiagalelei is easy, and not entirely unwarranted. The quarterback play for Florida State has been below average, and that’s being kind. But that’s in part because the way the Seminoles have played has not meshed with who Uiagalelei is as a quarterback.
To be effective, Uiagalelei needs a solid run game in his favor. He’s the type of quarterback who can get in a rhythm and pick teams apart over time, but he needs to have a good ground game to be able to do that. If opponents aren’t worried about the deep ball and aren’t worried about the run game, they’ll sell out for the short pass, leaving Uiagalelei to either take a sack or throw into traffic.
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Oregon State had a good ground game last season. The Beavers had Damien Martinez in the backfield, and they ran the ball well enough for Martinez to finish second in the Pac-12 in rushing yards. That kept the heat off of Uiagalelei, and he had a fine season in Corvallis.
Florida State’s run game is simply pathetic. The Seminoles are 132nd in the nation in running the ball and obviously dead last in the ACC on the ground. The linemen aren’t blocking, the running backs aren’t explosive and the Seminoles just look lost in that area. That falls on Mike Norvell as well as his coaches. Whether he hasn’t recruited well or coached well, he has not put Uiagalelei or Brock Glenn in a position to succeed.
The game against Duke was proof of that. The Seminoles had three consecutive offensive snaps end with the football in the hands of a Blue Devil. FSU had four turnovers overall and lost by seven. That just can’t happen.
The Seminoles Can’t Tackle
Florida State’s defense has been shoddy at best. The Seminoles could have survived average play from the offense if they were getting the job done defensively, but they are not. The FSU defense keeps getting chewed up on the ground, leading to long drives that result in points.
At 172 yards per game, the Seminoles rank dead last in the ACC in rushing yards allowed. Florida State just can’t get off the field because opponents are averaging over four yards per carry. When you’re constantly facing third down and four or less, you have to prepare for anything from the offense.
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That weighs on a defense. And when the offense isn’t bailing them out, there’s no end to the cycle in sight. Gradually, the defense breaks down and the offense can’t provide a solution. And it leads to loss after loss after loss in the case of this year’s Seminoles.
Mistakes in the Portal
Mike Norvell, to his credit, tried to plug up the holes he clearly had after last season. The Seminoles looked terrible in the bowl game against Georgia (the Bulldogs were motivated and the Seminoles were down to their third string), making it clear Norvell had to fill some holes.
Fine. But the Seminoles clearly made the wrong decisions in the portal. They returned 10 players with starting experience from a season ago, and that should have at least been enough to be competitive in the ACC. It wasn’t, because the moves made haven’t panned out. Florida State has struggled to figure out what pieces go where, and that’s on the coaching staff.
Norvell has to figure out what has gone wrong this season and create a long-term plan for how to fix it. He had Florida State at the top of the ACC a year ago and went 23-4 over the previous two seasons before this year, so it’s very possible for him to get this fixed. But he cannot repeat the same mistakes that he made this year. He has to figure out whether he’s better off hitting the portal or going for high school kids and making a two or three-year plan. Whichever decision he makes has to be the right one, because patience is not a virtue that exists in Tallahassee. Norvell’s unbeaten year last season bought him some leeway, but that’s gone now. His next critical mistake is probably his last.
