FSU Football: How did #Tribe19 play against Miami?

After FSU football’s game against Miami on Saturday, Chop Chat’s Sam Tschida takes a look at how the true freshmen played against the Hurricanes.

It was an…. interesting weekend for the ‘Noles. FSU football lost to Miami for the third straight year and is now executing its second coaching search in just two seasons.

There are not a lot of bright spots to be taken from this past weekend. However, one thing fans should be encouraged by is the play of the true freshmen against Miami, which offers some hope after a terrible weekend in Tallahassee. Let’s see how the ‘Noles did.

Offense

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the FSU football o-line did not have a great weekend.

The ‘Noles let Miami sack the quarterback a grand total of NINE times, with defensive end Gregory Rousseau responsible for four of those.

For the second straight game, FSU had two true freshmen starting on the offensive line, with Dontae Lucas and Darius Washington both starting at left guard and tackle. Due to a major lack of any sort of deep threat from FSU’s offense, Miami stacked the box almost every play, putting the o-line at a major disadvantage from the start.

The PFF grades have not been released yet, but it is safe to say they won’t be very good for the offensive line as a whole. Washington and Lucas did struggle a lot during the game, getting beat when pass and run blocking throughout.

However, there were a few positives, like this one here, where both freshmen walled off their defenders and Baveon Johnson got to the linebacker.

It might not have been the best day for the true freshmen, but that’s to be expected when facing an elite front seven.

Defense

Miami was supposed to have a putrid offense, but the FSU football defense seemed to cure a lot of their ills, with Jarren Williams having his best game of the year. Once again, a ton of true freshmen got reps, and while they didn’t always make the play, it was encouraging to see.

Akeem Dent once again got the start and had a decent game. The former five-star safety wracked up three tackles, all of them solo and had two pass breakups. He did get beat while playing in a deep zone during the 3rd quarter that set up a UM field goal, but also made a great play here to break up a Miami pass.

Elsewhere in the secondary, Brendan Gant and Renardo Green both recorded a tackle, although Green did get burned early on in the game for a Miami TD. Raymond Woodie III also got reps at safety and on special teams but didn’t record any stats.

In the front seven, Jaleel McRae once again saw a lot of snaps at middle linebacker but didn’t record any snaps. Tru Thompson also got snaps in place of Robert Cooper, and did a good job of controlling the middle of the line of scrimmage, but did not record any stats as well.

Bottom Line

Once again, FSU is without a long-term head coach and the recruits in the 2020 class are dropping. The 2019 class was the first full recruiting class under Taggart, and it would not be surprising if a lot of them decided to transfer after this season. Hopefully, for Seminole fans, most of #Tribe19 stay, because they have been getting better and better every week.