FSU football: Who will be the backup quarterback in Orange Bowl vs UGA?

FSU football received the news on Monday afternoon that redshirt junior quarterback Tate Rodemaker announced that he will be entering the transfer portal and will not be playing in the Orange Bowl versus the Georgia Bulldogs on Saturday, December 30th at 4:00 PM EST.

It is understandable why Rodemaker entered the portal due to being in the fourth year of the offensive system where he was consistently being recruited over. The Seminoles even brought in two transfer quarterback options with Washington State's Cameron Ward and Oregon State's DJ Uiagalelei.

During his four-year playing career with Florida State, the Valdosta (GA) native completed 68 of his 118 passes (57.6%) for 901 yards and seven touchdowns with five interceptions. He was a three-star prospect in the Class of 2020, which was head football coach Mike Norvell's first recruiting class with the Seminoles.

We at ChopChat do wish Rodemaker nothing but the best as he navigates through the next chapter of his life. With the news of the veteran transferring out, the Seminoles will now turn to true freshman Brock Glenn to be its starting signal caller. The former four-star prospect only completed eight of his 21 pass attempts for 55 yards in the Seminoles' 16-6 victory over the Louisville Cardinals.

The struggles were to be expected by a true freshman quarterback, who battled through an injury that prohibited him from practicing for a portion of the season. Hopefully, Glenn learned from the experiences that he had because this will be another daunting task as he faces an aggressive Georgia Bulldogs defensive unit.

Depth is thin at the quarterback position as Glenn is the only scholarship signal caller remaining on the roster with redshirt senior Jordan Travis suffering a season-ending injury, redshirt junior Tate Rodemaker transferring out of the program, and redshirt freshman AJ Duffy transferred to San Diego State (Class of 2024 four-star signee Luke Kromenhoek is practicing with the team, but he is ineligible to play in the game).

This asks the question: Who will be the primary back up for the Florida State Seminoles in the Orange Bowl?

The Seminoles do have walk-ons such as redshirt freshman Dylan McNamara and freshman Michael Grant on the roster. However, neither have collegiate experience.

One player that I would monitor is redshirt junior wide receiver Deuce Spann. who used to play quarterback at Illinois before converting over to the receiver position. While it is not ideal to have the Seminoles play Spann at quarterback, this is a game where Florida State just has to make it out of Hard Rock Stadium without too much damage.

Hopefully, the Seminoles could lean to the Wildcat with redshirt junior running back Lawrance Toafili just like it did so against Louisville in the ACC Championship.