FSU football: Was ‘Noles offensive output against BC a mirage?

FSU football put up some nice offensive numbers against Boston College Saturday. Was it because Kendal Briles had full control of the offense?

I felt this could happen with FSU football against Boston College. It was no secret folk expected points to be scored in the game as the over/under was over 60 points.

The narrative with Willie Taggart gone would be Kendal Briles would have full control of the offense and the offense would look better.

What I knew going into the game was the offense should have looked great against Boston College. After all, they were allowing over 30 points per game and nearly 6.5 yards per play.

They were allowing nearly 4.5 yards per rush and only had 11 sacks on the season. That meant FSU football should have been able to run the ball successfully with time for James Blackman to get the ball to his playmakers through the air

Guess what? Boston College didn’t have a single sack in the game and FSU averaged 5.7 yards per rush with a ton of that production coming on a 66 yard run by Jordan Travis. That’s 37 percent of the rushing production on one play.

The passing game had two explosive plays of 74 yards and 60 yards respectively. That’s 50 percent of the production on two plays alone.

Now it’s fair to say the Briles’ offense is built on being explosive, but that’s 38 percent of FSU’s total offensive yardage on three of their 57 plays.

Everyone thought Kendal Briles had full autonomy of the offense in the first few games before whispers came out that Willie Taggart was involved.

I’m curious how that could have been confirmed when no one could confirm who the starting quarterback would be before games?

The offense struggled in those games too, particularly in the second half after looking great in the first half. So, I’m not sure how much weight I’d put in the FSU offensive production being solely due to Kendal Briles or Willie Taggart not being the head coach.

I think the biggest factor was FSU was simply going up against a really terrible defense that was ranked No. 100 or so by SP+ stats going into the FSU game. The only other two teams comparable to Boston College are Louisiana-Monroe and Louisville.

The FSU offense looked pretty good against those teams for the most part as well, so this performance against Boston College shouldn’t have been a surprise.