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

Not a good performance for the Florida State secondary, but not horrendous either. I’m starting to sense a theme here with the defense in general.

First Florida State allowed NC State to pass for a total of 255 yards through the air, with 230 of those yards coming off the arm of quarterback Ryan Finley. The other 25 yards came in the form of a trick play where Jaylen Samuels hit Dylan Parham, who had snuck pass the Florida State secondary unnoticed. If Samuels had hit Parham in stride, it could have went for even more yards as there was a ton of green ahead of him.

The other big mental lapse was Finley’s 71-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Jakobi Meyers. Junior safety Derwin James should have been able to make the tackle, but he was uncharacteristically faked out by Meyers and then Meyers turned on the jets to the endzone. Mental breakdowns like that cost teams, especially when you look at the final score in this one.

Other than that James did have the best game for the secondary on the stat sheet. He had eight tackles and a pass breakup. He also had an interception that was called back because of a pass interference penalty on another Florida State defender.