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Florida State finds itself desperate for a win after a dismal 0-3 start to the season. The challenge won’t get any easier this week as they welcome the 3-0 California Golden Bears to Doak Campbell Stadium. The Noles and Bear will face off under the lights in a game of firsts. This will be the first meeting between the two schools, Cal’s first conference game as a member of the ACC, and either team will be getting its first win or taking its first loss of the season. These two teams find themselves on the opposite side of the table to where most expected them to be. Coming off a 6-7 season, Cal was projected to finish 10th in the ACC whereas the reigning conference champion FSU was projected to repeat in 2024.
The Bears have gotten off to a hot start this season sitting at 3-0 with a statement win after traveling over 2,400 miles into SEC country and knocking off the Auburn Tigers (21-14) as an 11.5-point underdog. It hasn’t always been pretty for Cal. They had to overcome a slow start against (FCS) UC Davis to start the season. Cal took a narrow 14-13 lead into halftime but pulled away to win 31-13. In game three, the Bears had another slow start against a struggling San Diego State team as they once again went into the half leading by a slim 7-3 margin. However, the Bears found ways to win the second half and pulled away cruising to a 31-10 blowout victory.
Despite the two different starts to the season, Vegas still has Florida State coming in as a -2.5-point favorite at home. The majority of wagers are on Cal to cover the spread, but an overwhelming majority of the money is riding on the Noles to get the win in a close game. Some of the main storylines coming into this game are the impact Alex Atkins’s return will have on FSU’s abysmal offense. Will we see a change at quarterback for the Seminoles? For Cal, they have been without their star running back Jayden Ott, who is questionable again this week.
The Bears had a decent offense last season averaging just north of 30 points per game. Cal shuffled quarterbacks throughout the season before settling on redshirt freshman Fernando Mendoza who started the final eight games. Mendoza won the starting job and has performed well so far in 2024. He isn’t necessarily a gunslinger averaging 29 attempts and 196 yards per game, but he’s an efficient passer with a 70.1% completion percentage and 5 touchdowns to only 1 interception.
Cal’s passing game primarily lives in the short to mid-range area with 71.3% of their passes being between 0-19 yards. The majority (46%) were in the 0-9 range with only 9.2% being deep shots over 20 yards. Cal is not a screen-heavy team with only an 11.7% screen pass percentage, but they use a lot of play-action at 42.7%. While Mendoza hasn’t been under pressure often at just 27.2%, his pressure-to-sack percentage is the 4th highest in the Power 4 at 32.1%. He has been sacked 9 times this season, so while FSU hasn’t been a pressure-generating team, they did see a major uptick in the Memphis game vs. A non-mobile quarterback, so this could be an opportunity to disrupt the passing game.
I interviewed Mendoza at ACC media days, and he is an intelligent and well-spoken young man. He told me growing up in South Florida as a Miami fan, he is familiar with Florida State and looking forward to playing in Doak Campbell Stadium.
With Jaydn Ott being limited due to injury, Cal has leaned on redshirt sophomore Jaivian Thomas, who is averaging an impressive 7.8 yards per carry with 241 yards on 31 attempts. He shares the backfield with senior Kadarius Calloway, who has 102 yards on 18 carries and an impressive yards per carry average of 5.7. If Ott can return, he is the most dangerous of the group. Last season he racked up 1,484 all-purpose yards and 14 touchdowns despite being limited in three games. He only has 24 carries this season and did not play in Cal’s last game against SDSU. Ott was a preseason All-American and FSU’s defense has struggled to stop the run, so his return could spell trouble for the Noles defense.
Cal’s receivers are led by 6-foot-2, 210-pound redshirt freshman Nyziah Hunter. He has 12 receptions for 143 yards and 4 touchdowns. Hunter is the only wide receiver to record a touchdown for the Bears other than senior tight end Corey Dyches who has 1. Junior Jonathan Brady has been the number two target for Mendoza with 7 receptions for 95 yards. The Cal receivers are a sure-handed group with a team catch rate of 72.7% and only a 4.7% dropped pass percentage. For reference, FSU’s team average is only 61.1 % and leads the Power 4 in dropped pass percentage at 14.1%
Cal has an experienced offensive line that has only allowed Mendoza to be pressured on 27.2% of dropbacks, however, that has a lot to do with an excellent game against the inferior FCS opponent allowing just 3 pressures. Against Auburn, they allowed 16 pressures which resulted in 2 sacks. They followed that up by allowing 9 pressures and 6 sacks against SDSU.
Florida State’s defense showed some life last week against Memphis. The Noles finally faced a non-dual-threat quarterback and racked up 16 pressures and 3 sacks. The rushing defense also improved, holding an opponent under 200 yards for the first time all season. This will be the key to keeping FSU in the game this week. Although the challenge will be tougher than last week, if they can slow the ground game and cause some havoc in the backfield on passing plays, that could give FSU a chance in this one.
Cal’s biggest question coming into this season was their defense. The Bears faced some tough offenses in the Pac-12 and finished the season with the 114th-ranked scoring defense. They faced four Top 25 offenses last season and gave up an astounding 57.3 PPG against them. So far, they have gotten off to a much better start sitting at 28th in scoring defense allowing only 12.3 PPG.
To be fair, the level of competition has not been the greatest. They faced an FCS team, a G5 team who was shut out against the other Power 4 team they faced (Oregon State), and Auburn who has beat up on some bad lower-level teams while only scoring 14 points against their only Power 4 opponent. However, Florida State’s offense has been one of the worst in the entire country through three games, so it’s not like they will pose much more of a challenge.
Cal, at times, runs one of the more interesting defensive formations I’ve ever heard of with two defensive linemen, four linebackers, and five defensive backs. The Bears have an experienced front and a solid linebacking core led by Cade Uluave, a freshman All-American in 2023. UC Davis transfer linebacker Teddye Buchanan leads the team in tackles, TFLs, and sacks. The formation sounds odd, but they walk larger linebackers up to fill the edge positions.
Cal has an experienced secondary that consists of all upperclassmen, and they are having quite the season with 8 interceptions and 7 PBUs. Cal’s 9 interceptions as a team lead the country and aid them in being tied for second in turnover margin at +8 (FSU is at -3). This is going to be a challenge for a struggling Seminoles offense that is only averaging 15.3 PPG (124th).
I warned FSU fans in the preseason that this game might be harder than you think and that was long before FSU’s 0-3 start. The game I had my eye on for Cal was against Auburn. Cal had them beat in Berkeley last year but missed 3 field goals. This year they had to travel to Alabama and into Jordan-Haire stadium, but they managed to walk in there and knock off the Tigers in front of 88 thousand fans. This will be another long trip east for Cal, and while Auburn is not a good team, neither is FSU. With Doak under renovation and after a 0-3 start, there will probably be somewhere around 50k in attendance, so the opponent nor the atmosphere will shake this team.
Cal has looked good so far but has not been flawless. As I previously mentioned, they only held a 1-point lead vs. an FCS team and were only up 7-3 over SDSU at half. Yes, they opened it up in the second half, but the key is if they have another slow start, FSU must take advantage of that. Even in their big win against Auburn, they won the turnover battle 5-0 and still only won by one score. Speaking of mistakes, Cal has been heavily penalized this season averaging 9.3 per game (124th). Interestingly enough, when DJU was at Oregon State last season, Cal was his best game going 19-25 for 275 yards and 5 touchdowns, which is 5 times as many as he’s thrown through three games this season.
My keys to victory for FSU start with the defense. They showed some life last week vs. Memphis and practice reports have been positive for them this week. I believe there is something to build from. The problem is they get gassed late in the game because the offense is so bad they can’t stay off the field.
There seems to be an opportunity to create pressure against Mendoza being Cal has allowed 25 pressures and 8 sacks in the past 2 games. FSU created 16 pressures and 3 sacks last week vs. Memphis. While Medoza hasn’t been pressured often, his numbers are much worse when he is. If FSU can create havoc in the pocket and rattle the young quarterback, that would be huge for this defense. However, that can’t come at the expense of getting gashed in the running game. FSU did hold Memphis to -1 rushing yard in the first half last week, but this is a better running team.
On offense, well, just do anything… FSU has only scored over 20 points once in three games and the offense continues to get worse. 12 points against a G5 team at home last week was embarrassing. The key will be to help the defense by sustaining some drives and scoring at least 20 points. Cal has been dangerous at creating turnovers and FSU has not. With this offense, they absolutely can’t afford to have an Auburn-esk game where they lose the turnover battle by a wide margin.
Cal has been good in the red zone scoring on 10 of 12 drives, but more importantly, they have gotten 9 touchdowns in 10 trips. Florida State has allowed scores on 11 of 12 drives and given up 9 touchdowns to 2 field goals. On the other side, FSU has scored on 5 of 5 trips with only 2 touchdowns and 3 field goals while Cal has allowed scores on 4 of 5 trips with 3 touchdowns and 1 field goal allowed. Those numbers ring an alarm that is the most concerning about this game. If you just look at the fact that FSU has allowed 12 drives to reach the red zone compared to Cal at 5, and FSU has only reached the red zone 5 times compared to 12 for Cal, that’s VERY concerning.
Honestly, you could have probably skipped the rest of the preview and just considered three things. 1) The lopsided red zone trips we just covered. 2) Cal is +8 in turnover margin and FSU is -3. – 3) Cal is 3-0 and found ways to win whereas FSU is 0-3 and found ways to lose. That alone makes it hard to pick FSU to win this one. For what it’s worth, there have been reports of better energy in practice this week and some, not all, guys seem to have a desire to turn this around.
While I don’t think getting Atkins back is going to make a night and day difference when he’s been able to coach the other 6 days per week, it can’t hurt, after all, he is the OC and real OL coach. If Darius Washington and Jeremiah Byers are also back that would be a big boost for a bad offensive line, but we likely won’t know their status until Saturday.
FSU needs a win in the worst way, but this is going to be a tough one to get. Will we see Brock this week either as the starter or in relief if DJU struggles again? Only time will tell. I genuinely hate picking against FSU, and I did give them the benefit of the doubt last week against Memphis and they let me down.
Therefore, I’m going to go with some reverse psychology this week, I just think Cal is the better team right now and take the Bears in this one. I will say that I have an odd suspicion that Cal may come in a little overconfident and FSU sneaks a win here… I sure hope I’m right, but that’s not changing my pick (which I would gladly love to be wrong about). Give me Cal in a close one, 24-20. Thanks for reading and Go Noles!
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