The Florida State football team picked up its first victory of the 2021 season on Saturday -- a 33-30 nail-biter against visiting Syracuse -- and it's time to make sense of it all with our latest Warchant 3-2-1.
As always, we break things down with three key observations, two questions and a prediction. The focus this week is on Jordan Travis' re-emergence, the highs and lows on defense, the team's improvement in crucial situations, the toughness displayed by a winless team and more.
Don't miss out on any of our great FSU Football coverage. Get your 30-day FREE trial!
Three things we've learned
1. Appreciate the toughness while seeking improvement
Everyone who watched Saturday's game knows this Florida State football team still has a long way to go. The offense has to struggle for every yard for a variety of reasons. The defense looks terrific on some drives and lost on others. The special teams are not providing the edge that Mike Norvell says is the backbone of his program.
But in my mind, none of those were the biggest stories of this game. And it's important to get those issues out of the way so we can focus on the topics that were most important: Toughness and fortitude.
Football is a brutal sport. We all know that.
The guys who play it aren't like the rest of us. What they put their bodies through just for the chance to compete each Saturday is sometimes incomprehensible. And that determination, that perseverance through physical punishment, obviously is not a quality reserved for Florida State -- it exists within football programs all over the country. From middle schools to high schools, from non-scholarship players in Division-III to the best of the best in the Power 5.
But after watching FSU find a way to pull off its first win of the season Saturday afternoon, snaring a 33-30 victory on a last-minute drive and field goal, this is the area where we probably should place the greatest emphasis right now.
Simply put, that was a gritty win. Mentally and physically.
And it says something for these players and coaches that they could show that resolve in both areas after what they went through in the month of September. A heartbreaking loss to a top-10 team. An embarrassing last-second defeat to an FCS opponent. Two more losses to start the ACC season. A fan base that is moving on to other fall activities, based on the attendance of the last two home games.
Yet when these Seminoles found themselves at the program's lowest point in decades, they somehow willed themselves to a victory.
Jordan Travis was wearing a bulky knee brace earlier this week, and FSU's coaches weren't sure he would be able to practice or play as of Wednesday. He took every snap on Saturday, despite taking a few more vicious hits, and came through with a pair of monster runs in the fourth quarter to set up the game-winning field goal.
Center Maurice Smith, who missed the last 3 1/2 games due to injury and whose status was a game-time decision, came off the bench midway through the first half and played the rest of the game. The other four offensive linemen -- tackles Robert Scott and Darius Washington and guards Dillan Gibbons and Devontay Love-Taylor -- are dealing with ailments of their own. But for the second straight week, none of them came off the field one time. They competed on every snap.
Defensive back Travis Jay has been limited recently by a lower leg injury. Before Saturday's game, he worked extensively with an athletic trainer to see if it was healed enough to play in the game. It apparently wasn't. As far as I could tell, he went in Saturday for only one snap -- when Syracuse attempted a Hail Mary just before halftime. On one good leg, Travis Jay out-leaped everyone else in the back of the end zone and recorded the interception.
There are probably countless other examples we don't even know about.
Then there was the mental toughness displayed by guys like Jordan Travis, Keyshawn Helton and Ryan Fitzgerald. All three have experienced very low moments this season, and all three came up with huge plays in clutch situations to help their teammates pick up their first win.
