FSU football lost against the Stanford Cardinals 20-13 in the wee hours of Sunday morning on the West Coast. The game didn’t feel particularly close, as the Cardinals led for nearly the entire game and had a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter.
Here’s the crazy part. FSU won nearly every statistical category except on the scoreboard:
FSU had more first downs. They were better on third down and had double the amount of passing yards, more rushing yards, and won the turnover margin.
So how did FSU lose the game? Well, they missed a field goal and had to settle for two more. They had two turnovers on downs in the fourth quarter.
Stanford got away with several uncalled penalties, and FSU had 13 penalties for 79 yards. FSU had MULTIPLE chances on offense to execute plays and put points on the board, but failed to execute.
FSU started the game throwing the ball, quickly going three-and-out. It’s something they did quite often for some reason, although they had decent success running the ball. It looked like FSU got in trouble when they tried to pass.
Thomas Castellanos had 28 pass attempts (14 completions) and was off target several times because he had poor footwork. The receivers didn’t help him on a couple of incompletions, and he made poor decisions multiple times instead of hitting wide-open players.
Stanford got FSU to play how they wanted them to play, forcing Castellanos to throw the ball once they saw the refs were going to allow them to play very physically, and FSU got baited into it. FSU failed to execute just as they have in the other three losses.
FSU head coach Mike Norvell looked and sounded like a defeated man in the post-game press conference. He admitted his best hasn't been good enough, and this game was a great example of why that's the case.