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Contact: Josh Yoder / jyoder@jfqlending.com / 480-378-0489

As the smoke clears following Florida State's 48-16 loss Saturday at Louisville, it's time for another edition of the Warchant 3-2-1, where we offer three observations, two questions and one prediction.

In this edition, we reflect on how the Seminoles' offense was affected by Jordan Travis' injury, what can possibly be done to help this struggling defense, why FSU has performed so poorly in second halves this season, and more.

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1 -- Some big decisions on table during second bye week

These will be a very interesting two weeks for the Florida State football program.

After getting dominated in just about every phase Saturday afternoon at Louisville, the Seminoles will need every minute of these 14 days to figure out some answers to important questions on both sides of the football.

On defense, the list is obviously very long, and everything has to be on the table for consideration. Through six games, defensive coordinator Adam Fuller's group does not do anything consistently well -- they don't stop the run, they're not very good at pressuring the quarterback, and the secondary really struggled on Saturday.

All of those issues are not going to be cleaned up during a bye week, but this will be a good time for Fuller and his staff -- along with plenty of input from head coach Mike Norvell -- to reassess what they're trying to do on defense and why it's not working. (More on that below.)

On offense, I honestly wasn't too surprised to see things bog down at Louisville once it became obvious that quarterback Jordan Travis was not anywhere close to 100 percent physically. After the game, Norvell acknowledged Travis was "banged up" coming into the game -- which we all could have expected based on the end of the North Carolina win -- and it seems as if he might have aggravated whatever injury he is dealing with early on Saturday.

That was a disastrous blow to an offense that desperately needs what Travis provided during the last three games to have any real chance for success.

This isn't exactly a national secret here, but what makes Travis special is his running skills and his ability to make plays while on the move (see his unbelievable touchdown run on the game's first drive, which featured perhaps the first crossover dribble in college football history.)

Travis has proven to be a better passer than some of us might have thought, but he's not consistent enough in that area -- especially considering the rest of this offense's limitations -- to beat good defenses by staying primarily in the pocket. Part of the reason this offensive line has looked so much better in recent weeks is because of what Travis can do with his legs. He also has taken a ton of pressure off of the running backs.

But once we could tell Travis was restricting that part of his game -- he obviously had been instructed to either slide or get out of bounds at the first sign of contact, and he was reluctant to keep the ball on the zone-read -- then all of those benefits began to dry up. And then once the Seminoles got down by two or three scores, the party was essentially over, because this team doesn't have any of the ingredients necessary to get back into a game by primarily throwing the ball.