After putting itself in position to earn a bowl berth with a strong second half of the 2021 season, the Florida State football team came up empty Saturday against rival Florida.
Due mostly to key special-teams blunders and surprising lapses in composure, the Seminoles fell behind by 17 points in the fourth quarter before ultimately losing 24-21.
In this edition of the Warchant 3-2-1 -- where we offer three observations, two questions and one prediction -- we take a closer look at what went wrong Saturday, take a big-picture view of the 2021 season, marvel at more awful officiating, and look ahead to the future of FSU Football under Mike Norvell.
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Three things we learned
1 -- There was a path to victory for FSU, but that wasn't it
A lot of us predicted Florida State was going to win Saturday's game, but it wasn't necessarily because we thought the 'Noles had the better overall team -- not from a personnel standpoint, anyway.
The Gators, who had the same coaching staff in place for the past four years, have a mature roster that was built mostly through top-10 recruiting classes and by also acquiring quality players through the transfer portal. FSU, meanwhile, is still trying to fortify a roster that was dismantled by two coaching changes in 24 months.
So I think most of us knew the Gators would have an overall advantage in size, strength, speed and playmaking ability. It's why UF was at one point a top-10 team this season and how it was playing toe-to-toe with Alabama two months ago.
The reason we thought FSU could -- maybe even should -- win was because of everything else. The coaching turmoil with Dan Mullen getting fired. The lack of discipline that the Gators have shown throughout the season, and the fact that they have absolutely laid down at times.
Losing Jordan Travis for a huge chunk of the first half -- he essentially missed three of FSU's first five drives -- was a pothole on the Seminoles' path to victory. Instead of getting out to an early lead and seeing if the Gators really wanted to compete for four quarters, FSU was hanging on for dear life and honestly lucky to be in a tie game at halftime.
Then things went further south in the third quarter when the 'Noles made two special-teams blunders in the span of about six minutes, with the big one being Ontaria Wilson's muffed punt return. Those mistakes gave UF two short fields to work with, and suddenly FSU found itself in a 10-point hole.
That was the exact opposite of how this game needed to play out for Mike Norvell and company to pull out a win.
Florida State's strength in the second half of the season was its ability to play cleaner football -- limiting mistakes, penalties and turnovers -- and by competing so hard for all four quarters. I thought they still played hard on Saturday, but they didn't play clean and they didn't play smart.
And when they didn't get a lead in the first half, and especially when they fell behind by two scores in the second, they didn't give the Gators a chance to fall apart like they have done several times before.
Which leads us to observation No. 2 ...
