Florida State Football: What happened to the Seminoles against Syracuse?

2. Florida State plays defense- in the red zone. That’s it.

Watching Florida State absolutely be demolished by Syracuse was extremely disappointing for a fan of good, competitive football games. I will tell you this, anyone who says that Florida State is just a bit “down this year,” is trying to hard to be nice and is lying to you.

From what I saw, this Florida State team knows how to play defense well. However, they only seem to want to play it when they enter the red zone. Ask any coach of any football team and they will tell you how bad that is. You can get excited about trading touchdowns for field goals all day long, but you can still lose to multiple field goals will your offense isn’t scoring much at all.

Syracuse didn’t score a touchdown until the third quarter. They were only 8-of-19 on third down. Those statistics would make you think that this team could be victorious, but that wasn’t the case. Simply put, Florida State lost on field goals instead of touchdowns. The red zone defense may have pushed the score down a bit from what it could be, but it didn’t help them much at all in terms of their now 1-2 record.