Florida State lost to No. 19 SMU 27-24 on Monday night. If you only looked at the final score, you could reasonably assume the Seminoles went toe-to-toe with a ranked opponent and simply came up one possession short.
In one sense, they did. SMU never led by more than seven points. Florida State tied the game at 17 in the third quarter, tied it again at 24 with just over eight minutes remaining and didn’t officially lose until SMU kicked the winning field goal with 21 seconds left.
But a close scoreboard doesn’t necessarily mean two teams played evenly.
This is exactly why we’re launching Beyond the Box Score, a new weekly series using our PTS Data Lab to dig beneath the traditional box score and tell the story hidden inside the numbers. We’ll look at efficiency, success rate, game flow, situational football and other advanced metrics, then pair those numbers with what we actually watched happen on the field.
And unfortunately for Florida State, the first edition isn’t particularly flattering.
The deeper you look at Monday night’s game, the harder it becomes to describe this as simply a narrow loss to a good football team. SMU consistently played the more efficient football, while turnovers and a few timely FSU plays kept the scoreboard much closer than the down-to-down performance suggested.
The Score Was Close. The Efficiency Wasn’t.
Florida State and SMU ran virtually the same number of official offensive plays. FSU ran 68. SMU ran 67. That makes what happened with those opportunities even more revealing.
SMU gained 585 yards to Florida State’s 324, a difference of 261 yards despite running one fewer play. The Mustangs averaged an absurd 8.73 yards per play, while FSU managed only 4.76.
The advanced numbers tell the same story.
SMU posted a 55.2% offensive success rate compared with only 37.3% for Florida State. Success rate measures whether an offense gains enough yardage based on down and distance to keep itself on schedule, so this isn’t simply a measure of who hit a couple of long plays.
SMU was successful on more than half of its eligible offensive snaps. Florida State wasn’t successful on even four out of ten.
The Mustangs also held the advantage in predicted points added per play, +0.373 to +0.194, another indication that SMU consistently generated more valuable offensive snaps.
That distinction matters because there is a temptation after a three-point loss to focus on one or two plays that could have changed the result.
Florida State absolutely had opportunities to win this game. But that’s different from saying Florida State played as well as SMU. The Seminoles survived long enough to have a chance to steal it.
So How Did A Game This Lopsided Stay Close?
Turnovers.
Officially, Florida State finished +3 in turnover margin because SMU committed four turnovers and FSU committed one. But even that requires context.
Florida State’s lone giveaway came as time expired while the Seminoles were attempting a desperation lateral play after Ashton Daniels had scrambled into SMU territory. For the meaningful competitive portion of the game, FSU effectively played with a four-turnover advantage.
That’s enormous.
SMU repeatedly gave Florida State opportunities to overcome the efficiency gap, and those mistakes are the biggest reason the score remained within one possession throughout the night. The game-flow numbers make that dynamic obvious.
SMU held the better offensive success rate in every quarter:
First quarter: 68.8% to 50.0%
Second quarter: 43.5% to 33.3%
Third quarter: 53.8% to 44.4%
Fourth quarter: 60.0% to 22.2%
Yet Florida State still reached halftime down only 17-10 and tied the game in the third quarter.
FSU actually produced the better PPA per play in the third quarter despite having the lower success rate. That’s an important nuance. The Seminoles weren’t completely incapable of producing valuable plays; they found enough of them at the right times to erase the deficit.
What they could not do was consistently sustain that level of performance. The fourth quarter illustrates the difference better than anything.
Florida State tied the game at 24 with 8:17 remaining. The scoreboard said it was anybody’s game.
SMU’s fourth-quarter success rate was 60%. Florida State’s was 22.2%.
One team was consistently functioning offensively with the game on the line. The other was hanging on.
The Passing Game Created The Biggest Separation
If you’re looking for the single biggest reason SMU controlled the underlying game, start here.
SMU threw for 430 yards. Florida State threw for 125.
That’s a 305-yard advantage through the air, which more than accounts for SMU’s 261-yard advantage in total offense. Florida State actually finished with 44 more official rushing yards than SMU, but the passing disparity completely overwhelmed that edge.
And once again, this wasn’t merely the product of two or three explosives. SMU completed 72.2% of its passes compared with 52.2% for Florida State and averaged 11.94 yards per attempt to FSU’s 5.43.
The biggest number to me, though, is passing success rate. SMU: 61.1%. Florida State: 30.8%
SMU was successful on nearly twice the percentage of eligible passing plays. That is domination.
The film provides context for what those numbers looked like.
Take the 79-yard Yannick Smith touchdown in the fourth quarter. It came on third-and-6 with Florida State’s defensive backs giving significant cushion. At the snap, the secondary continued to give ground, leaving a huge amount of space underneath.
Kevin Jennings didn’t need to make an extraordinary throw. He hit an easy slant around the sticks.
Then the pursuit angle was poor, the tackle was missed, and what should have at minimum been an easy third-down conversion became a 79-yard touchdown.
The missed tackle created the explosive. The structure helped create the completion.
That’s an important distinction because simply saying, “make the tackle and it’s not a touchdown,” ignores the larger issue. FSU needed six yards to get off the field and essentially conceded the throwing window necessary to gain those six yards.
That play was not the entire game, but it was a pretty good snapshot of it.
Florida State struggled to affect Jennings, played too much soft coverage underneath, and repeatedly gave SMU comfortable answers in areas of the field the Mustangs wanted to attack. The same issue we saw versus New Mexico State. SMU was just a better team, so they were able to leverage those weaknesses into a win.
The advanced statistics don’t tell us why SMU posted a 61.1% passing success rate. The film helps explain it.
FSU’s Run Game Was A Relative Bright Spot — With An Important Asterisk
Florida State did have something productive offensively. The Seminoles rushed for 199 yards and two touchdowns, compared with 155 yards and no rushing scores for SMU.
Given everything else that went wrong, the ground game clearly gave FSU its best path toward functional offense. But this is another place where the traditional box score can oversimplify the story.
Florida State averaged 4.42 yards per official rush, while SMU averaged 5.00. SMU also posted the better rushing success rate, 48.4% to 41.5%.
So FSU accumulated more rushing yards and generated the only rushing touchdowns, but SMU was actually more consistent on a snap-to-snap basis.
There is some nuance in the value of those carries as well. Florida State held a slight rushing PPA advantage, +0.162 per play to +0.128, indicating that some of FSU’s successful runs generated meaningful value. That’s consistent with what we saw from the Seminoles’ ability to create occasional chunk plays.
But the rushing attack wasn’t consistently steamrolling SMU. The better way to frame it is relative to Florida State’s own offense.
FSU’s rushing success rate was 41.5%. Its passing success rate was 30.8%.
The run game was the more dependable way for Florida State to stay on schedule, even if it wasn’t dominant enough to control the game by itself. That is something worth building around.
The problem is what happened whenever Florida State needed the passing game to complement it.
Third Down Exposed The Difference Between The Two Offenses
Turnovers kept Florida State alive. Third down kept SMU in control. The Mustangs converted 8 of 14 third downs, good for 57.1%. Florida State converted 2 of 15. That’s 13.3%.
There may not be another statistic from this game that better explains why one offense could repeatedly recover from mistakes while the other struggled to capitalize on them.
SMU could turn the football over and still get another possession knowing its offense had consistently demonstrated the ability to move the chains.
Florida State needed the short fields and extra opportunities because sustaining drives was a completely different challenge. FSU started 0-11 on third down and didn’t convert their first one until the fourth quarter.
FSU also held the advantage in penalties, committing only three for 27 yards compared with SMU’s six for 47.
So think about the situational profile Florida State was given:
It had what functionally amounted to a +4 turnover advantage until the final desperation play.
It committed fewer penalties.
It possessed the football longer.
It played at home.
And the game was tied with eight minutes remaining.
Those are the ingredients of an upset.
Florida State still couldn’t finish it because the most repeatable portions of the game — efficiency and third-down execution — belonged overwhelmingly to SMU. That’s what makes this loss so frustrating. SMU did not play a clean game. Florida State didn’t force the Mustangs to be perfect. The Mustangs gave FSU opportunities. The Seminoles simply weren’t good enough offensively or defensively on a down-to-down basis to fully cash them in.
I looked up a few examples of what a game like this could have, and probably should have, ended up like, keeping in mind that FSU was outgained by 261 yards.
Virginia outgained NC State by 245 yards and won 34-8.
Miami outgained Stanford by 250 yards and won 45-6.
Wake Forest outgained Akron by 254 yards (an almost identical split to FSU vs SMU at 559-305) and won 38-16.
The point is, FSU was very fortunate to have SMU repeatedly trying to give this game away. I give credit to FSU for creating 4 turnovers, but you can’t count on that every game.
The Fourth Quarter Tells You What You Need To Know
When Florida State tied the game at 24, Doak was alive, and SMU had every reason to feel the pressure of an opener on the road. This was the scenario FSU wanted. But underneath the excitement of the comeback, the efficiency gap never really disappeared.
SMU posted its highest success-rate advantage of any quarter in the fourth, outperforming FSU by 37.8 percentage points. That’s a massive gap in the most important 15 minutes of the game.
Florida State produced one huge touchdown pass to tie it, which mattered enormously on the scoreboard. That’s why PPA and explosiveness can sometimes tell a different story than success rate.
But SMU was the offense consistently producing positive answers. That’s eventually what decided the game.
What The Numbers Really Say
This wasn’t a 27-24 game that secretly should have been a 40-point blowout. SMU never built a large lead, Florida State made legitimate plays to stay in the game, and the turnovers were real football plays that deserve credit.
But the opposite interpretation — that FSU essentially played No. 19 SMU evenly and merely lost a coin-flip game at the end — doesn’t hold up either.
The truth is more uncomfortable.
Florida State created turnovers and generated enough rushing production to stay within striking distance. Those things mattered. But SMU controlled the more sustainable areas of the game.
The Mustangs gained 261 more yards, averaged almost four additional yards per play, held an 18-point advantage in success rate, produced nearly double FSU’s passing success rate and converted third downs at more than four times Florida State’s rate.
The scoreboard stayed close because SMU kept opening the door. Florida State just never walked all the way through it. That’s the story of this game beyond the box score.
FSU’s takeaways and rushing production kept it competitive, but SMU’s passing efficiency and third-down execution defined the game.
And for Florida State, that’s a much more concerning takeaway than simply losing to a ranked team by three points. Now, consider that four of the next five opponents on the schedule are ranked, three are on the road, and none will be playing their first game of the season like SMU. FSU better get a lot better over the bye week or buckle up…
