FSU Football: Is Virginia Tech an overrated team heading into 2018?

FSU football will have their work cut out for them during the 2018 season, but do they not have as much to worry about as thought in their opener?

In just over one month, all the preseason hype will be out of the way for the FSU football team and the Seminoles will take the field for the first time in the 2018 season – a year thought to be a difficult one considering the gauntlet of games the Noles have on their schedule this coming season.

There are the tough conference games like a battle with the three time ACC champions from Clemson and road games against Miami, Louisville and N.C. State along with the non-conference affairs against Notre Dame on the road and Florida at home in the final three weeks of the season.

Another game mentioned by many is the opener for FSU football against the Virginia Tech Hokies – a team the Seminoles haven’t faced since 2012 and one the Noles have played just five times since the Hokies joined the ACC in the 2004 season (including two title game meetings).

This week, ESPN released their power rankings for the upcoming season, with the Hokies ahead of the Seminoles in the opener:

• No. 2 Clemson
• No. 9 Miami
• No. 15 Virginia Tech
• No. 18 FLORIDA STATE

In the same breath, three of the five experts surveyed also said that the Hokies are ranked too high in the preseason:

"Andrea Adelson: Depth is a concern across much of the roster, leaving the Hokies with plenty of questions to answer before the opener against Florida State.Edward Aschoff: Those losses on defense are just going to be so hard to overcome. Just looking at the schedule today, I can see four losses that would bounce the Hokies out of the top 25.Adam Rittenberg: Quarterback Josh Jackson is still there but I don’t know who makes plays around him. This simply isn’t a top-15 team right now."

So, with all talk about how tough the opener is going to be for FSU football this season, are the Seminoles actually in a better position than we thought they might be?

Look, I’m not saying that the Noles are going to beat the Hokies by 21 points and stomp all over their mascot in the middle of Doak Campbell Stadium, but the facts are that the talk has been focused on FSU rebounding and not what Va. Tech brings to the table.

Like Wittenberg said, Jackson is a great quarterback who had a very good freshman season – but got exposed by the big defenses he played last season like getting embarrassed on the road by the Miami Hurricanes.

This is a team who has lost nearly a dozen players on the defensive side of the ball from last season as well as a co-coordinator, meaning plenty of fresh faces will be the ones season the field when they take on the Seminoles.

Will Virginia Tech be a game FSU football needs to watch out for? Of course they will. Should the Seminoles be as worried as they are about other teams like Clemson and Miami? Probably not.