The Florida State football team has had to stew on its underwhelming 2024 debut last Saturday in Dublin for over a week.
After watching the entirety of a hectic Week 1 slate, the Seminoles (0-1, 0-1 in ACC) finally get their chance to show that 24-21 loss to Georgia Tech wasn't representative of their team on Monday night (7:30 p.m. on ESPN) inside Doak Campbell Stadium as the capper of Week 1 when they host Boston College in their first home game of the season.
The Seminoles will look to show improvement after getting out-physicalled by the Yellow Jackets in Dublin, allowing 6.5 yards per play, failing to record any sacks and managing just 3.2 yards per rush in the loss. There may also be some changes to FSU's rotation vs. BC. FSU made three changes to its Week 1 depth chart this week and may make a few other unannounced changes on gameday.
Despite FSU's season-opening loss, it is still favored by 16 points against the Eagles Monday night. The game at FSU will be the first of Bill O'Brien's tenure as BC head coach after he replaced Jeff Hafley, who left this offseason to be defensive coordinator for the Green Bay Packers. FSU leads the all-time series over Boston College 16-5 and has won the last five games in the series dating back to 2018 and 12 of the last 13 games vs. BC. However, BC nearly pulled off a big upset last season in Chestnut Hill, falling 31-29.
While the brand-new 12-team College Football Playoff means that FSU's loss to Georgia Tech doesn't totally ruin the Seminoles' postseason aspirations, a loss to BC Monday night would drop FSU to 0-2 in the ACC and make a path to the ACC Championship Game in Charlotte, and therefore a CFP bid, very unlikely.
Of note for any DirecTV subscribers, an ongoing dispute means that the ESPN family of networks is not available to you. As such, any DirecTV customers will be unable to watch Monday night's game on their televisions. All other cable providers currently have a deal in place with ESPN.
This will also be the first game played in the reduced-capacity Doak Campbell Stadium due to ongoing renovations that will finish ahead of the 2025 season. All of the bleachers on the west (home) sideline have been removed and 7,000 temporary chairback seats have been added to replace some of the lost capacity.
We'll be monitoring pregame if sophomore wide receiver Hykeem Williams is able to make his season debut vs. Boston College after missing the Georgia Tech game due to injury. Head coach Mike Norvell expressed some optimism in his press conference last Wednesday about how Williams was progressing but was noncommittal about his potential availability. Alabama transfer linebacker Shawn Murphy is also trying to make his FSU debut after missing the GT game due to injury.
We'll have updates from the press box starting around 5:30 p.m. when it opens up. We'll be sharing pregame availability updates and then live game updates in the live game thread on the Osceola Village once the game gets underway.
