FSU football will face some solid teams in 2021, but some are getting too much love from the media. Here are my three most overrated teams FSU will face.
The Noles have done themselves no favors the past few years playing ridiculously tough schedules while not getting rewarded for it.
Last year’s abbreviated schedule was tough as usual, but not having an offseason made it more difficult than it should have been.
FSU’s season has been over after the first month or so the past few years, but the 2021 schedule finally gives them a chance for sustained success beyond September.
In the earlier part of the last 10 years, FSU football fans would look at this schedule and say there are 2-3 competitive games on it.
The schedule has some tricky games because we don’t know what to expect from the Noles after last season’s COVID-influenced season.
FSU’s performance against Notre Dame in the opener will tell us a lot about this program as a whole.
Although we don’t know what to expect from the Noles, I expect the team to improve over last year. Will that result in more than three wins? I think so, and there are teams on the schedule getting too much respect going into the season.
Here are my three most overrated teams on the 2021 FSU football schedule.
Miami
Miami rolled the Noles last season, but I don’t put a ton of stock into that game. It was the second game of the year without their head coach or the eventual starting quarterback, and FSU was atrocious.
The Canes finished the season (8-3) and only had one win against a ranked opponent (three-point win over No. 24 NC State).
While the record was their best in nearly a decade, it could have been a lot different. Miami beat a .500 Virginia team by five points at home.
They beat a sub .500 team (Virginia Tech) by one point and got lucky against Pittsburgh when the Panthers’ starting quarterback was out with an injury.
It’s not like they were close to elite, and their defense allowed 27 points per game and 5.59 yards per play.
D’Eriq King returns from an injury, and the Canes will face Alabama right out of the gate. Everyone expects Miami to get rolled by the Crimson Tide, and who knows what happens to the Canes after that?
That program historically doesn’t respond well to losses in high-profile games. The latest preseason power ranking from ESPN has the Canes at No. 11. That ranking is way too high for a program that played a bunch of mediocre programs and easily could have finished 6-5.
Notre Dame
Notre Dame finished season 10-2, losing against Clemson in the ACC Championship game and getting rolled by Alabama in the College Football Playoff semifinal.
Notre Dame ranks No. 9 in the latest preseason power ranking from ESPN. I think that’s too high with a program that lost so much from last season.
Notre Dame loses its winningest quarterback in program history (Ian Book), four players from the offensive line, top two wide receivers, and All-American defensive player Jeremiah Owusu-Karamoah.
The Fighting Irish will have a new defensive coordinator in 2021.
Notre Dame recruited well over the past couple of years, but that’s a lot of firepower to replace at some key positions.
The Noles catch them at an opportune time with the first game of the season, and there’s a reason the point spread is only 10 points after Notre Dame has owned FSU the past two seasons.
Boston College
It’s funny to think FSU football has beaten Boston College the last two times they have faced one another. The Noles won by one point in 2018 and held off Boston College to win on the road in 2019.
Those are two of the worst FSU football teams of all time(right in front of last year’s squad). However, Boston College managed to finish the 2020 season at (6-5) under first-year head coach Jeff Hafley.
For whatever reason, Boston College seems to be a program on the up and up after finishing over .500(they were 6-7 in 2019).
However, the only team they beat with a winning record in 2020 was Pittsburgh. Their other wins came against Duke, Texas State, Syracuse, and Louisville.
Let’s be clear, and they didn’t exactly dominate any of those teams in those wins either. Boston College, much like FSU football, allowed more points on defense than their offense scored last season.
They return their starting quarterback Phil Jurkovec, who passed for 2,558 yards, 17 touchdowns, five interceptions, and completed 61 percent of his passes.
However, they are not one of the more talented teams the Noles will face in 2021. They play three cupcakes to open the 2021 season, and then we’ll begin to see how good they are when they play Power 5 competition.
Final Thoughts
There were a couple of other teams I could have put on this list, but these three are the ones that stand out the most, with pundits picking them to do well in 2021.
Florida is another team that comes to mind as ranked too high going into the season. Their defense was terrible last season, and they lose a lot from their offense. I know they rolled FSU last year, but Louisville is a team that could implode.
I think that had more to do with FSU being terrible than Louisville being a good team.
FSU could win one of these three games on the list or go 0-3, but I expect them to be competitive in all of them, and that’s saying something with how they’ve looked the last couple of years.
FSU has several question marks going into 2021, but I feel better about the quarterback position than I have in a long time.
I think the offensive line will improve, and the defense has nowhere to go but up. The players from the transfer portal will play a large part in whether the Noles improve or not.