Florida State Football: Positional report card for loss to NC State

Florida State football’s 27-21 loss to NC State on Saturday puts the Seminoles in a 0-2 hole to start the season

This was not the start Florida State fans envisioned coming into the season. After losing to Alabama in the opening game, Florida State had two games cancelled/postponed. Now they lost another game, this time to conference foe NC State.

Head coach Jimbo Fisher has a uphill battle to get this season turned around. While the Seminoles are not out of the ACC race yet, it certainly does not look good. It was a different team, but last year the Seminoles lost three conference games yet still made it to the Orange Bowl and won. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Florida State can turn the season around, but they have to sense the urgency.

Just looking at the box score would lead one to think that it was all bad for the Seminoles, but there were some positives to take away. Let’s grade out the position groups for the game against the Wolfpack.

While there will be some positives in these positional grades, the offensive line certainly was not one of them. As a group, they got worse as the game progressed.

NC State racked up four sacks and only allowed the Seminoles to rush for 104 total yards. The Seminole offensive line was bullied all afternoon by the Wolfpack, namely their star defensive end Bradley Chubb. Now to the Seminoles credit, it’s tough for any team to contain Chubb. The problem was that the offensive line couldn’t contain any of the experienced defensive linemen for the Wolfpack.

If Florida State is going to have any chance of making noise in the ACC this season, they will certainly need to start protecting their quarterback better and establish some run blocking.