The Florida State Seminoles’ quest to prove their legitimacy in 2024 after a controversial College Football Playoff snub in 2023 has not gone according to plan.
How shocking has FSU’s start been? And what could the fallout be now that the Seminoles have lost their third straight game to start the 2024 campaign?
Florida State Loses Non-Conference Clash Against Memphis, Snuffing Playoff Hopes
The Florida State Seminoles went undefeated — 13-0 — through the regular season and conference championship weekend in 2023. Many felt that the Seminoles should have been included in the College Football Playoff field on account of their success.
But through a controversial selection process — in which the season-ending injury of ACC Offensive Player of the Year Jordan Travis carried weight — the Seminoles were left out of the four-team field in favor of Michigan, Alabama, Texas, and Washington.
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The Seminoles vowed revenge in 2024, and with the playoff field expanding to 12 teams, it was expected that they’d be in the hunt for the ACC title and in the postseason discussion by season’s end.
Instead, their hopes are gone before they even materialized on the field.
The Seminoles lost their first two ACC clashes of the year against Georgia Tech and Boston College. Both Georgia Tech and Boston College have entered the top 25 at different points this season, so neither loss is unconscionable. Nonetheless, both losses were surprising for Florida State.
Then, in Week 3, the final nail sunk in. Florida State lost a home game against non-conference opponent Memphis — head coach Mike Norvell’s former team — by a score of 20-12.
The Seminoles were down 13-3 at halftime. Quarterback DJ Uiagalelei threw for just 201 yards and an interception.
With this loss, Norvell’s Seminoles are 0-3 to start the 2024 campaign and 0-2 in conference play.
Even if they win out in the regular season, they’ll fall below their expected win total, and their ACC title and CFB Playoff hopes are all but dashed.
Florida State Paid Memphis $1.3M To Play — Now Pay in a Different Way
According to On3 Sports reporter Pete Nakos, Florida State paid Memphis $1.3 million to make the trip to Tallahassee in 2024.
It was intended to be a simple non-conference tune-up game, but it ended up being the most devastating of Florida State’s three losses thus far.
Now, Florida State has become the first preseason top-10-ranked team in AP Poll history to lose its first three matchups, all against unranked opponents.
There were questions about how the Seminoles would handle massive turnover from 2023 to 2024.
In the 2024 offseason, the Seminoles lost countless impact players, including Travis, Jared Verse, Keon Coleman, Braden Fiske, Johnny Wilson, Jarrian Jones, Renardo Green, Trey Benson, Kalen DeLoach, and Jaheim Bell.
The hope was that returning stars like Patrick Payton would take the reins and help weather the change, while transfer additions like Uiagalelei solidified the team’s status as a contender. Instead, the first three weeks of the 2024 campaign have been an abject disaster.
Florida State has the rest of the month of September to get right. The Seminoles play California next week and SMU the week after that. After SMU, Florida State will play a ranked Clemson Tigers team, and the Seminoles will enter their toughest stretch of ACC play.
One loss from this point out would render their postseason hopes moot beyond a simple bowl game. And even then, they’re fighting an uphill battle to get to six wins.
Norvell should still have a degree of long-term security after back-to-back double-digit win seasons. But the Seminoles’ start to the 2024 campaign has been so shocking that perhaps no change is truly off the table.
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