There are two ways to view Florida State’s upset loss to Virginia. Through one lens, in year six of the Mike Norvell era, FSU lost as a touchdown favorite against a school with virtually no football history. The Seminoles outgained the Cavaliers, averaged more yards per play and won the turnover battle sans a final […]
There are two ways to view Florida State’s upset loss to Virginia.
Through one lens, in year six of the Mike Norvell era, FSU lost as a touchdown favorite against a school with virtually no football history. The Seminoles outgained the Cavaliers, averaged more yards per play and won the turnover battle sans a final prayer at the end of the second overtime. These are games Florida State should not lose, but still are, and Charlottesville is still the Noles’ Waterloo.
However, football is not described in a vacuum, but rather through a series of chapters in an ongoing story. The Seminoles entered this season determined to close the book on the 2024 season and start anew. In came two new coordinators, 23 transfers, and a program-wide overhaul. The problems created from last year’s Florida State team cannot be solved in one season, making Friday night a necessary learning moment in a new era of the FSU program.
“They made one more play than what we did,” a dejected Mike Norvell told the media in Charlottesville, “There were multiple opportunities throughout that contest, and any different result on 20 or 30 plays, it’s going to be a different outcome at the end. But that’s football.”
The story is well-told by now: Norvell needed to revive a dilapidated defense after last season and brought in Tony White in the offseason to implement a scheme never used at Florida State before: the 3-3-5. Ran to perfection, the defense acts as the aggressor, tries to play offense on defense, and confuses the opposing quarterback into making a litany of mistakes. In week one, the Seminoles lived up to the hype of what the 3-3-5 can be. On Friday, Florida State’s defense unit did nothing of the sort and became a phantasmagoria of what happened under their previous defensive regime.
The Cavs ran the ball down the Noles’ throats, and either White never adjusted or they simply did not work. Anytime FSU sat back, the beat-up UVA offensive line pushed the pile for five yards. Whenever White brought pressure, QB Chandler Morris avoided pressure, beat the Seminoles with his legs and finished the night with three rushing touchdowns. The lasting image of the defense’s performance was the entire D-Line staring into the abyss after Virginia’s second 6+ minute touchdown drive of the second half with nobody making a motion, not even DL coach Terrance Knighton, except for prized transfer pickup James Williams shaking his head.
Of course, nobody on the defensive line knew how to solve their issues because they had not played together long enough to find the answer. The coaching staff could not solve the Cavalier Rubik’s Cube because they did not know their best 11 defenders. Two true freshmen outsnapped Jayson Jenkins. AJ Contrill earned playing time than Omar Graham Jr. Most of those on the field are not White’s players, and it showed. Tonight’s bludgeoning is a product of circumstance, rather than a referendum on the roster and is part of the process when starting from zero.
“There were some times when we weren’t all on the same page,” Norvell stated when discussing the defense’s struggles, “That’s something that has to get corrected. Those were some of the things we talked about the last few weeks. You play a team that can expose that, and it creates levels of challenge throughout a game. That showed up and we have to better.”
On the other side of the ball, Gus Malzahn’s offense did enough to win. Once again, the offensive line was the metronome for the rhythm of a high-powered FSU attack. The Seminoles went for over 500 yards, picked up 24 first downs and ran 81 plays. But it was not a perfect night for the former UCF head coach.
Malzahn attempted to balance catching UVA off guard and going straight at the Cavaliers, but he faltered in critical spots. For every jump pass, there was a cash-down letdown, and for every misdirection success, the Cavaliers snuffed out Malzahn’s attempt to catch them sleeping. With Malzahn still learning what he can trust in his offense, FSU missed multiple opportunities to push the ball down the field. Although Duce Robinson went for 147 yards and a touchdown, the star wide receiver did not catch a ball from Castellanos from the 2:54 mark in the second quarter until the 7:20 mark in the final frame. However, the offensive coordinator ran Castellanos 14 times, the second leading rusher on the team, but outside of a 22-yard scamper, the quarterback averaged 4.3 yards per carry while battling a lower-body injury suffered less than a week ago. Even as the self-proclaimed “old-ball coach” Malzahn does not have his finger completely on the pulse of his side of the ball, leading to an offense leaving points on the board and flying to Tallahassee with a loss in hand.
But outside of criticism of the play-calling, that is as far as the complaints for the loss should go. The Seminoles battled out of a 14-0 hole to score 21 unanswered points and converted a 4th-and-goal with less than a minute in the fourth quarter, two improbable tasks to complete for any team, much less for a program coming off a 2-10 season when its calling card was quitting. While a defeat, tonight’s loss once again proved 2024 to be the anomaly, and FSU as a program that fights and responds instead of turning away. Indeed, the Seminoles are no longer going 12-0. But who believed that they would? These types of losses are natural for a program trying to rebuild — and the ones that are looked back at the end of the restoration.
Thought No. 1: A taste of your own medicine
After dishing out punishment to its first three opponents and dominating those schools on the ground, Virginia offered Florida State a taste of its own medicine on Friday. The Cavaliers ran the ball 48 times for 211 yards with four touchdowns, and those numbers feel small. Virginia took the game over in the second half with two drives spanning 14:11 minutes, 28 plays, and 149 yards. In their opening drive of the third quarter, 11 of UVA’s 12 plays came on the ground while Morris dealt with a thumb injury. What was supposed to be an injured Virginia offensive line against a mammoth FSU defensive front turned into the main reason Florida State fell on Friday. James Williams and Darrell Jackson Jr., the highest profile defensive lineman on the roster, combined for 1 solo tackle, zero tackles for loss and zero sacks. The rest of the defensive front followed suit, ranging from ineffective to invisible while the Cavaliers deflated the defense one four-yard rush at a time. As much as some say FSU deserved to win, when a team controls the game on the ground the way Virginia did on Friday, the better team came out on top in Charlottesville. Now, White needs to figure out a serviceable plan before one of the best rushing offenses in the country strides into town next Saturday.
“There were definitely issues that showed up,” Norvell said about his team’s run defense. “We’ve got to be better. Credit to Virginia. I thought they did some good things well formationally, and the way that they were attacking to create leverage on the edge. Obviously, we have to be better.”
Thought No. 2: Fab Five
While Virginia’s offensive line stole the show, Florida State’s group of five up front once again rose to the occasion. The mix of Gunnar Hansen, Richie Leonard, Luke Petitbon, Adrian Medly, and Micah Pettus played every snap together except one and put forth another monumental effort. The Seminoles rushed for 5.7 yards a carry (not including sack yardage) while recording their fourth-straight game with 230 yards or more to begin the season. When FSU needed it, Malzahn ran the ball on six of Florida State’s seven plays during their first touchdown drive, and four times on their four-play drive to tie the game at 14. Herb Hand’s unit was also flagged for only one penalty, an iffy call on Petitbon in the first quarter, but still an impressive feat for a group with so much on its plate. Castellanos was sacked once in regulation, helping the quarterback earn a 120.7 QBR, and allowing him to push the ball down the field to Robinson. FSU held their breath when Hansen went down in the second quarter, but he stayed in the game after missing one snap, and the revolution along the offensive line continued.
Thought No. 3: Wisdom of the Stairs
No matter what Norvell chooses throughout the game, there will always be a crowd of people who disagree with the decision. If Norvell had chosen to go for two at the end of regulation and missed, the public would ask why. Instead, the opposite is true. The head coach kicked an extra point to tie the game at 35 with 36 seconds left instead of going for two and trying to win the game outright. Norvell, who tends to take calculated risks, did not seem to consider the decision when it might have been the correct answer. With his defense exhausted and his team executing in short-yardage situations, trying to end the contest once and for all seemed logical. The head coach also played it safe at the end of the first half with 46 seconds left and two timeouts and kicked a field goal to open the second half on the UVA 25. For a game with limited possessions due to Virginia’s time-consuming drives but a high-scoring affair, Norvell needed to push his chips in further instead of taking the conventional rout.
Category: General Sports
