Florida State’s season is over.
They can no longer worry about being left out of the College Football Playoff — again — the Seminoles have to worry about just winning a game. After back-to-back conference losses at the hands of Georgia Tech and Boston College, FSU has just a 0.07 percent chance of making the CFP. So, even if they were to run the table, there’s no guarantee they’d be among college football’s final 12 teams.
But Mike Norvell’s team with DJ Uiagalelei under center has given zero indications that they can salvage a season marred by losses to two unranked opponents. Monday’s loss saw the Seminoles give up 263 yards on the ground; that doesn’t happen by accident. It would’ve been more, but with two minutes to go and inside FSU’s 4-yard line, Bill O’Brien’s side elected to kneel the ball three times.
They wanted Florida State to know it could’ve been more, but BC called off the dogs.
To ESPN’s Louis Riddick, Florida State’s loss to Boston College was a bitter pill to swallow and a potential turning point for the worse.
“I think in some ways, it’s worse what they’re doing,” said Riddick. “If I was Florida State. ‘So you’re showing us mercy, huh?’ If that is not an exclamation point on this game, I don’t know what is. We don’t need to score. We could. Guess what? Look up at that scoreboard. We rushed for 270 yards. I mean, what is this, Nebraska, 1985? 270 yards!”
It might not be Nebraska 1985, but it might not be Florida State we’re accustomed to either. The Seminoles may have come into the season ranked No. 10, but you are what your record says you are, and the Seminoles aren’t very good. So much so that Riddick is ready to call it a season for FSU.
Joining SportsCenter with Scott Van Pelt , Riddick, who called the game alongside Bob Wischusen , said that FSU likely expected to redeem themselves on Monday, but they were dominated from start to finish.
“I would bet that that’s what they thought because that was the discourse surrounding this football team all week,” Riddick said. “Did you hear anybody saying, ‘Yeah, Boston College can be another test, can be another team that can rise up and punches them in the mouth the same way Georgia Tech did?’ No, no one.
“Every conversation leading up to this game was, ‘Well, they’re big-time favorites. They’ll get right this week. It was a wake-up call going to Ireland. They’ll be just fine. They have too many good players. They have a front four that looks like an NFL front four on defense. DJ will find his rhythm. The offensive line will take over. They have so much experience.’ No, no, no, and no. And a lot of that had to do with the opponent. OK, I’m not saying it’s all about the opponent; we’ll find out about Boston College, as Coach O’Brien said.
“But I’ll tell you what, this football team has some serious soul-searching to do. This season could totally go off the rails…This is a team that right now that is fighting for it to not be one of those imploding type of seasons that absolutely costs all kinds of people some employment. This could really get ugly for them if the leadership of this football team — and I’m not talking about Mike Norvell — I’m talking about in the locker room.
“They miss guys like Jordan Travis. They miss guys like Braden Fiske. They miss guys like Jared Verse. Guys who are in the pros right now, who this staff told me last year when I was down here, ‘These are the glue guys. These are the foundational guys.’ These are the guys that helped turn around Mike Norvell’s time here and propelled them to a 13-0 season. Well, they’re gone. So, who’s it going to be now? Did you see a single guy out there tonight that looked like they could grab this football team and go, ‘We need to wake up and get things going.’ I didn’t see it, and I’m standing right here looking at it from this broadcast booth. I didn’t see it… It’ll be interesting to see how they respond next week.”
But will they be able to respond with Uiagalelei under center? Florida State fans were audibly cheering for his backup, Brock Glenn. It’s obvious that this experiment with the former Clemson and Oregon State quarterback has gone pretty miserably through two games.
With that, Van Pelt asked what Riddick saw from Monday’s broadcast booth.
“There just isn’t a chemistry, a rhythm, any consistency with which he can connect with his wide receivers at this point,” Riddick said. “And there really isn’t a second reaction dynamic component to his game, meaning it breaks down, ‘I have to make something happen that Coach Norvell didn’t tell me I needed to make happen.’ He doesn’t have that ability. His counterpart on the other sideline today (Thomas Castellanos), you saw it. It didn’t have to be perfect for him…Guess who can do that a year ago for Florida State before he got hurt? Jordan Travis could do that… They didn’t have that component here today.
“With DJ, it’s either gotta be, look, he has to become much more efficient, much more consistent with his accuracy and get on the same page with these receivers in a hurry, or else the passing game is always going to be a frustrating point.”
Riddick says all this points to a recipe for a disastrous season.
“I hope it doesn’t turn out that way for him,” he added.
It very well may.
The post Louis Riddick: Florida State needs serious ‘soul-searching’ after brutal loss appeared first on Awful Announcing .
Local News
Comments / 0