The path to the 12-team College Football Playoff Week 0: Florida State stunned

The 12-team College Football Playoff era is officially underway with four games in Week 0 of the 2024 college football season. It wasn’t a full meal of football, just a few hors d’oeuvres to whet our appetite for the season to come. So, the debut of The Path will be the same. 

This week included a classic college football upset that has already shaken up the outlook of the CFP, an ACC darkhorse narrowly escaping disaster, and plenty of electric performances deserving of recognition in the Week 0 Heisman Trophy race, but instead of 12 things, we’ll be serving a light first course. 

The Statement (The biggest wins of the week)

1. Georgia Tech is in the ACC race

Since the Florida State Seminoles were left out of the four-team CFP after an undefeated season, all Mike Norvell’s team has done is go 0-2 against teams from Georgia and get outscored 87-24. 

In fairness to the Noles, 63 of those 87 points came courtesy of Kirby Smart’s Georgia Bulldogs in last year’s Orange Bowl, but on Saturday in the first game of Week 0, unranked Georgia Tech beat No. 10 FSU 24-21 on a last-second field goal by Aidan Birr in the Aer Lingus College Football Classic in Dublin, Ireland. 

After a late-season injury in 2023, Florida State couldn’t replace Jordan Travis, but even with an offseason that included the high-profile addition of former Clemson quarterback D.J. Uiagalelei via Oregon State, Norvell still may not have his answer at the most important position. 

The Seminoles went from featuring Keon Coleman and Johnny Wilson in a high-octane passing game to a ground-and-pound unit, not a bad plan against a Georgia Tech team that ranked 131st in run defense last season, allowing 221.3 rushing yards per game.

The only problem is that Georgia Tech head coach Brent Key went out and got himself an elite defensive coordinator this offseason after this performance Tyler Santucci will be a rising star in coaching circles. Santucci overhauled a group that allowed 5.4 yards per rush across the 2023 season and on Saturday, held a Seminoles rushing attack that featured Alabama transfer Roydell Williams, last year’s ACC Championship game MVP Lawrance Toafili, and dynamic Indiana transfer Jaylin Lucas, to 3.2 yards per rush. 

After a seven-play 75-yard scoring drive to start the game, Santucci’s defense swarmed and held Florida State to 5.0 yards per play for the game. It went into halftime tied, but those 14 points weren’t easy for the Noles, coming courtesy of 52 and 59-yard field goals, both on drives aided by 15-yard penalties. 

Last year, in Week 1, Mike Elko’s Duke Blue Devils knocked off No. 9 Clemson 28-7. Elko’s creative defense forced three turnovers in the upset victory, and a year later, with Elko now the head man in College Station, his disciple knocked off another ACC favorite with a masterful performance. It’s safe to say, Key is happy with the early returns on that decision. 

Despite finishing with just one sack of Uiagalelei, Georgia Tech was consistently disruptive in the backfield with six tackles for a loss, manhandling an FSU offensive line that returned three starters from last year’s unit and added 13-game starter Richie Leonard from LSU through the portal. 

Georgia Tech still has a gauntlet of a schedule to face with No. 1 Georgia and No. 7 Notre Dame in the non-conference, but the Yellow Jackets get both Miami and NC State at home. Two things can be true at once, Florida State was overrated, still skating by on the reputation of last season’s team despite having a completely reworked roster, and after a seven-win season in 2023, Georgia Tech just became a real player in the ACC with a shot to make it to the conference title game and sneak into the CFP. 

The win was Georgia Tech’s first against a top-10 opponent in its last 15 tries, dating back to a 2015 matchup between the unranked Yellow Jackets and the No. 9 Seminoles, and Brent Key has Tyler Santucci and his defense to thank for it. 

The Kirk Ferentz Trophy (Awarded to the head coach of a team that absolutely should not have won this week)

2. Rhett Lashlee: SMU

Last year’s AAC champs, the SMU Mustangs moved up to the ACC in 2024, but in Week 0 had trouble with a team expected to end the season in the basement of the Mountain West. The Nevada Wolf Pack and first-year head coach Jeff Choate gave Lashlee’s team everything it could handle in Reno, but ultimately junior quarterback Preston Stone pulled out a 29-24 comeback victory to keep their slim playoff hopes alive. 

In 2023, Stone threw for nearly 3,200 yards with 28 touchdowns and six interceptions and averaged 9.3 yards per attempt before a broken leg ended his season. To say that 2024 got off to a rocky start for Stone, would be an understatement (and an embarrassingly awful pun). 

SMU and Nevada each caught one of his first eight pass attempts and Stone ended the first half 3/7 for 43 yards with one pick. Backup quarterback, and team captain, Kevin Jennings replaced him for two series, the first of which resulted in a turnover on downs, the other a touchdown to even the score at seven. Jennings was 4/5 passing for 54 yards, yet, inexplicably, Lashlee reinserted his starter and stuck with him in the second half. 

Eventually, Stone settled in and finished 18/31 for 257 yards with a gorgeous throw down the left sideline for the game-winning touchdown, but it wasn’t just offensive excellence that ignited the Mustang’s comeback, Nevada falling all over itself throughout the entire fourth quarter certainly help. 

With 12:20 remaining in the 4th quarter and leading 24-13, Nevada called a trick play, and receiver Jaden Smith completed an 18-yard pass to Marcus Bellon to set up a first-down at the SMU 29-yard line. A field goal would have made it a two-touchdown lead, but instead, Nevada went backward. A 15-yard tripping penalty set up third-and-25, and then an illegal formation moved the Wolf Pack back to the 49-yard line and force a punt.

SMU responded with a 98-yard touchdown drive, the offensive excellence, made it 24-21, not 27-13, and was followed by another Nevada mistake. The Wolf Pack’s Ashton Hayes called for a fair catch on the kickoff, muffed it, and fielded it at the two, which set up a safety, 24-23. 

After both sided punted it back, and forth, SMU finally hit the kill-shot. 

The Mustangs have just one ranked opponent currently sitting on their 2024 regular season schedule, and the No. 10 Florida State Seminoles won’t be there for long after Saturday. The ACC slate sets up well for Lashlee to lead the Mustangs to a potential CFP berth, but to me, this roster is a long way from competing in the ACC and those flaws were impossible to ignore in Reno. 

Both Stone and Uiagalelei struggled in Week 0, but unlike FSU, SMU escaped its upset-scare. While both QBs had alarming performances Stone bounced back in the second half enough to quell concerns and Jennings’ presence in Dallas provides Lashlee with a solid Plan B. No, SMU’s issues lie elsewhere, and are potentially harder to overcome. 

The Mustangs hopes of a CFP run and technically still alive, but the way that Nevada dominated the line of scrimmage, holding SMU to 2.9 yards per carry and rushing for 143 yards of its own, is a harbinger of bad things to come in Power 4 football. 

“I promise you one thing…” (With a 12-team CFP, one loss doesn’t end your season)

3. Florida State still has hope, but do the Noles have a quarterback?

Last year, an undefeated regular season wasn’t enough for the Seminoles to make the CFP, now, even after a Week 0 loss to Georgia Tech, the Noles are still alive. Though, that doesn’t mean Mike Norvell’s team doesn’t have big problems. 

After losing Jordan Travis last season, Norvell’s offense spiraled, and in the first half, it was obvious that the FSU head coach and play-caller was scarred from the Tate Rodemaker/Brock Glenn experience. Even with the veteran Uiagalelei, Norvell had no interest in pushing the ball downfield against Georgia Tech. In the first half, Uiagalelei averaged negative air yards on 14 attempts. 

This, after last season at Oregon State, Uiagalelei posted an average depth of target of 11.7 which was the 16th deepest in college football among quarterbacks with at least 100 dropbacks. The former five-star quarterback has never been afraid to push the ball downfield, and in 2023, per PFF, he registered 18 “big-time throws” to just four turnover-worth plays on attempts over 20 yards downfield. He completed 25 of 58 deep throws for 784 yards and eight touchdowns with three interceptions. 

Uiagalelei hasn’t lived up to the hype he carried as the heir-apparent to Trevor Lawrence, if he had, he’d have stuck around at Clemson and gone to the NFL by now. Instead, it appears that the final chapter of his college football career will be a disappointing one. 

Norvell has built his program through the transfer portal, but this is the risk you run when addressing the most important position through it, especially with a one-year stop-gap like Uiagalelei. To avoid more midseason or offseason desperation, Norvell brought four-star quarterback Luke Kromenhoek to Tallahassee in the 2024 recruiting class, but it’s too early to look to the future, and with what Uiagalelei showed late, Norvell may not have to. 

Despite being coddled in the first half and struggling in the second half when the training wheels came off the offense, DJU converted two fourth-and-longs on Florida State’s final drive which ended with a game-tying score. He finished 19/27 for 193 yards, outplaying his counterpart Haynes King, at least through the air. 

If that’s the caliber of quarterback play that this Florida State team gets the rest of the season, then a bounce-back is in the cards. This version of Norvell’s Noles will be a run-first outfit, which seems unavoidable now. 

Ja’Khi Douglas and Malik Benson aren’t quite Keon Coleman and Johnny Wilson, but they did combine for eight grabs for 94 yards, which could have been more if DJU was more accurate and aggressive from the outset. So, if Norvell can simply construct a complementary passing game, there’s still enough talent in Tallahassee to make the ACC title game, and an ACC crown all but guarantees a top-four seed in the CFP.

In the postgame press conference, Norvell told reporters that, “for our football team, it’s all about our response from here.” Florida State’s next opportunity will be at home on Monday, September 2 against Boston College. After beginning the season with back-to-back conference games and then a bye, Norvell’s squad will face his former program, Memphis one of the Group of 5 favorites to make the CFP, in Week 4. For FSU, there isn’t much time to figure out this offense, because one more loss could be one too many. 

Play the fight song! (Whether by a great play-call or just a great play, the week’s most exciting and important touchdown)

4. Caught the Lobos looking

Now, it’s not going to affect the CFP, but Montana State is an FCS powerhouse and playoff mainstay. In their Week 0 matchup against Mountain West New Mexico, they pulled off a 10-point fourth-quarter comeback, helped in large part by Adam Jones’s 93-yard touchdown run. 

You may have noticed more and more players running across the offensive backfield on jet motions in recent years. Georgia Tech nearly knocked themselves out of field goal range on the game-winning drive because their reliance on it caused an errant snap. Well, there is a good reason for it. Young undisciplined linebackers and safeties just can’t help themselves. No matter how much you run it, the eye candy still sucks them toward the line of scrimmage and against the flow of the play, which sometimes, opens up a lane for a 93-yard touchdown run. 

Don’t watch the run, just watch what the motion does to New Mexico’s defensive backs on the top right of the screen. They both get drawn to the jet motion like a moth to a flame and when that happens… it’s time to play the fight song!

And the Week 0 Heisman Trophy goes too… 

5. Somebody named Haynes

Well, our Week 0 Heisman Trophy winner is either Haynes or Haynes. Georgia Tech quarterback Haynes King who threw for 146 yards on just 11 completions and added 54 on 15 physical carries, was in consideration, but the real star for the Yellow Jackets was running back Jamal Haynes. 

Haynes ran for 75 yards and two touchdowns on just 11 carries, and he hit the first Heisman pose of the season, so he has to take home the Week 0 hardware. 

Though he scored the final two touchdowns of the game for Georgia Tech, his biggest play of the game came at his own 28-yard line. On third-and-seven with under five minutes left in a tie game, a free rusher was streaking toward King, which forced him to check it down to his shifty running back. 

Haynes didn’t just get the first down which kept the drive alive and set up Aidan Birr’s game-winning kick, he also a got few keepsakes to bring home from Ireland; Kevin Knowles II and DJ Lundy’s ankles. 

It came on relatively small volume in a low-possession game, but Haynes was dynamic for Georgia Tech and is the best playmaker the Yellow Jackets have had since Jahmyr Gibbs put up 1,216 scrimmage yards in 2021.