Florida State football easily covered the -44.5 spread against the Kent State Golden Flashes on Saturday afternoon. The Noles accomplished what they wanted: a dominant win, many reserves getting to play, and escaped relatively injury-free, though they had a scare with quarterback.
We highlighted some of the eye-popping stats from the game here. It’s hard to learn much from games against overmatched competition, but FSU has had some interesting developments over the first three games that some folks may not grasp the importance of.
Here are my five most underappreciated takeaways from the Kent State game:
Focus and Fast Start
It would have been easy for FSU to come into the Kent State game lacking focus. They were -44.5 betting favorites and coming off a bye week. The FSU offense received the ball first and promptly went 65 yards on four plays to score a touchdown.
The FSU defense forced a punt, and the offense played great complementary football, going 95 yards on eight plays to make it 14-0 with 8:19 remaining. The Noles went on to score 35 points in the first quarter, which tied their record for most points scored in a quarter.
Some of that is Kent State being a bad team, but the ability to execute regardless of the opponent says a lot about the mental fortitude of this team.