The Osceola staff will be spending part of today and tomorrow morning to work our way through the TV copy of FSU's loss to North Carolina on Saturday afternoon. The Seminoles dropped to 1-8 on the season and finished ACC play with a 1-7 record.
North Carolina dominated the game from start to finish with the Tar Heels racked up 500 yards of total offense including 289 yards on the ground.
Meanwhile, FSU's offense was held to 201 yards of total offense including just 42 yards rushing on 28 carries and 159 yards through the air.
My thoughts before I start my rewatch are much the same this morning as they were before the game. It was an embarrassing performance and another loss that was hard optically. This team was not competitive.
The offensive line continues to play awful maybe even regressing. The disappointing thing here is that your two veteran offensive tackles continue to give up sacks and pressures at an alarming rate and are playing worse than the two young guards lining up next to them.
The two young quarterbacks continue to take a beating on a by-play basis, or are running for their lives. The coaches don't do anything to help Brock and Luke from a play calling standpoint. As athletic as these guys are they should be getting them out of the pocket and give them half field reads because they don't get enough time to read the entire field. When Jordan Travis was in the early stages of his development, they did a lot of half rolls, boot passes, until he was ready to take command of the entire offense. This would also take some pressure off the offensive line. The wide receivers continue to struggle to get open and blocking hasn't gotten any better. And I am still baffled that they will not get the ball in the hands of Toafili more. He had eight rushing attempts and one catch on two targets. He is the best skill player on offense, you have to get him the ball more, but this has been an ongoing issue.
The more disappointing performance came from the defense. There was no doubt about what UNC was going to do. They were going to hand the ball to Omarion Hampton and try to run through the middle of the FSU defense and for the most part they did that without an issue. FSU's defense could not match the physicality of Hampton or the UNC offensive line. They also made UNC's QB look like Russell Wilson in his prime in the first half. This FSU defense is soft across the board both physically and mentally and has been since the start of the season.
I thought UNC would win this game coming into the weekend. I didn't expect it to be in blowout fashion and didn't expect to see a listless and despondent FSU team that clearly had some guys quit on it during the game.
It is inexcusable to be 1-8 at FSU under any circumstances but the optics of the 1-8 season make it even worse, especially yesterday's loss.
As far as coaching changes in-season, we will see. I don't see it happening. But even when these changes happen, today, tomorrow at the end of the season these assistant coaches that aren't retained are just fall guys. If it weren't for Mike Norvell's contract, he would be the person held accountable for this season, and he should be. This is on him more than it is on any one individual in that building.
This program is in a very precarious place. Norvell says he is the guy to get this team out of this rut moving forward. It sounds like he will get at least a year or two to prove that. However, with the way this season continues to play out, it's fair to have questions about whether he is the right guy.
It has gotten so bad that even the most loyal FSU fans are questioning whether or not this team can beat Charleston Southern, an FCS program, in a couple of weeks. If that happens......but for right now let's not buy any more problems than this program already has, which are plentiful with a hard row to hoe ahead.
North Carolina dominated the game from start to finish with the Tar Heels racked up 500 yards of total offense including 289 yards on the ground.
Meanwhile, FSU's offense was held to 201 yards of total offense including just 42 yards rushing on 28 carries and 159 yards through the air.
My thoughts before I start my rewatch are much the same this morning as they were before the game. It was an embarrassing performance and another loss that was hard optically. This team was not competitive.
The offensive line continues to play awful maybe even regressing. The disappointing thing here is that your two veteran offensive tackles continue to give up sacks and pressures at an alarming rate and are playing worse than the two young guards lining up next to them.
The two young quarterbacks continue to take a beating on a by-play basis, or are running for their lives. The coaches don't do anything to help Brock and Luke from a play calling standpoint. As athletic as these guys are they should be getting them out of the pocket and give them half field reads because they don't get enough time to read the entire field. When Jordan Travis was in the early stages of his development, they did a lot of half rolls, boot passes, until he was ready to take command of the entire offense. This would also take some pressure off the offensive line. The wide receivers continue to struggle to get open and blocking hasn't gotten any better. And I am still baffled that they will not get the ball in the hands of Toafili more. He had eight rushing attempts and one catch on two targets. He is the best skill player on offense, you have to get him the ball more, but this has been an ongoing issue.
The more disappointing performance came from the defense. There was no doubt about what UNC was going to do. They were going to hand the ball to Omarion Hampton and try to run through the middle of the FSU defense and for the most part they did that without an issue. FSU's defense could not match the physicality of Hampton or the UNC offensive line. They also made UNC's QB look like Russell Wilson in his prime in the first half. This FSU defense is soft across the board both physically and mentally and has been since the start of the season.
I thought UNC would win this game coming into the weekend. I didn't expect it to be in blowout fashion and didn't expect to see a listless and despondent FSU team that clearly had some guys quit on it during the game.
It is inexcusable to be 1-8 at FSU under any circumstances but the optics of the 1-8 season make it even worse, especially yesterday's loss.
As far as coaching changes in-season, we will see. I don't see it happening. But even when these changes happen, today, tomorrow at the end of the season these assistant coaches that aren't retained are just fall guys. If it weren't for Mike Norvell's contract, he would be the person held accountable for this season, and he should be. This is on him more than it is on any one individual in that building.
This program is in a very precarious place. Norvell says he is the guy to get this team out of this rut moving forward. It sounds like he will get at least a year or two to prove that. However, with the way this season continues to play out, it's fair to have questions about whether he is the right guy.
It has gotten so bad that even the most loyal FSU fans are questioning whether or not this team can beat Charleston Southern, an FCS program, in a couple of weeks. If that happens......but for right now let's not buy any more problems than this program already has, which are plentiful with a hard row to hoe ahead.
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