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In the words of the 1960’s song by Simon & Garfunkel, “Hello, darkness, my old friend.” Just when we thought offensive line issues were becoming a thing of the past, they have reared their ugly head to plague this program once again. Florida State has a lot of issues, that when combined, form one of the worst offenses in college football. The blame can, and should, be thrown in many different directions because not much of anything has been good. There’s poor quarterback play, dropped passes, questionable play calling at times, and poor effort and execution is frankly a problem with this team. However, I believe the root cause of many of the issues is the abysmal play of the offensive line, which is something FSU fans are all too familiar with.
To be fair, they have dealt with injuries. Starting right tackle Jeremiah Byers has missed the past two games and Darius Washington was a last-second scratch vs. Memphis. However, Washington, who was projected to be your best lineman, got mauled repeatedly against Boston College. Not to mention, it’s year five and we were told this line was as deep as it has ever been. Well, where is this talented depth?
The line certainly isn’t helped by a slow-moving quarterback who has little to no pocket presence or sack-avoidance skills, and takes forever to make reads. The lack of a passing threat forces them to repeatedly run into loaded boxes, which is not all their fault, but maybe if the pass blocking were better, the passing game would have a chance at succeeding. After all, FSU has allowed the second most pressures in the Power 4 (min. of 50 dropbacks).
That brings up another point when looking for areas to throw the blame for this season. We throw most of it at the feet of DJ Uiagalelei, and deservedly so. However, he also doesn’t get much help from those around him. On top of those pressure numbers, FSU also has the highest dropped pass percentage in the Power 4 (minimum of 50 dropbacks). Those two aspects would make life difficult for any quarterback, but while I think Jordan Travis covered up a lot of the poor play up front, DJ distracts us from it as well.
On the surface, things seemed to be getting better after an insanely good year running the ball in 2022. However, in 2023 the signs of regression became noticeable, and in 2024, it’s fallen off a cliff. This comes as a severe disappointment after hearing all offseason about how this would be the best unit Norvell has ever had at FSU.
Because of what fans saw from Jordan, there is a clamor to recruit mobile quarterbacks. Sure, that would put a band-aid on a bullet wound, but I’d argue it’s not as much about recruiting a mobile QB to cover up the problem as much as it is doing what is necessary to fix the problem itself. Mike Norvell’s offense functions well with a dual-threat quarterback, but that’s not what it’s predicated on having to run at peak efficiency. Will Alex Atkins return be the key to success? One would have to imagine it will help, but he is allowed to coach the other six days per week, so I’m not sure we see a night and day difference. Let’s dive in.
Does FSU really need a mobile quarterback? In four years at Memphis, Norvell only had one quarterback finish the season with positive rushing yards at a mere +22. They never had a mobile quarterback, but still had a lot of really good offenses (top 10 scoring offense in 3/4 years and top 15 in all 4). So, how did they have so much success without a mobile quarterback? The simple answer is it all starts up front. Keep in mind Mike Norvell tried to bring his former offensive line coach Ryan Silverfield with him, but he stayed behind to take over Norvell’s position as head coach of the team that just beat FSU.
At the same time, his offenses that did feature a mobile quarterback (Talyor Kelly at Arizona State and Jordan Travis at FSU) finished top 20 in scoring offense 5 out of 6 seasons. So, he has clearly had success with both styles of quarterback. A big factor in what you need at quarterback is based on the pieces around them.
Also, when I say mobile vs. non-mobile quarterback, I’m not talking about Lamar Jackson vs. Tom Brady. In today’s college game, you at least need to be able to move the pocket and pick up a few first downs with your legs. FSU’s most successful season with Jordan Travis as the starter also happened to be the season in which he ran for the fewest yards by a wide margin. In essence, a mobile quarterback is a luxury but not a necessity, but a statue can be a detriment.
We throw a lot of blame for the offensive struggles on DJ Uiagalelei. While I fully admit that he does share heavily in the blame, he’s not the only thing causing this offense to be dysfunctional. Let’s talk numbers to show what I mean. We’ll start by looking at the pressure rates per season that the starting (non-mobile) quarterbacks faced at Memphis during Norvell’s tenure. (Per PFF)
As you can see, they averaged mid-20s with only one season eclipsing the 30% mark in his first season. Those are good numbers by all means. For reference, the standard in college football has been the Georgia Bulldogs for the past 3-5 years. The primary starting quarterback at UGA hasn’t faced a pressure rate over 30% in the past 10 years and 3 of their past 5 seasons (which included two national titles) were under 20%.
To throw in another comparison, let’s add Clemson, who has been the standard in the ACC for the better part of the past 10 years. The only two seasons in the past decade that a Clemson starting quarterback has seen a pressure rate of 30% or greater were 2021 and 2023. By no coincidence, those two seasons also were their worst over those 10 years.
It’s no secret that quarterbacks play much better in a clean pocket. So, with those numbers in mind, let’s look at how different things have been at FSU, even with a mobile QB in 4 seasons under the current staff. First, let me add that this isn’t me trying to place an indictment on Alex Atkins. FSU had offensive line issues long before he got here, which I’ll touch on in a minute. With that said, here are the pressure rates that Jordan Travis faced from 2020-2023, and DJ Uiagalelei so far in 2024.
Additionally, FSU quarterbacks not named Jordan Travis who had at least 35 dropbacks from 2020-2023 faced an average pressure rate of 39.8%. There are two other things to address here. First, the 2023 offensive line was pretty respectable at pass blocking. It was run blocking where they struggled. Also, the pressure numbers appear to have been a product of Jordan Travis becoming a more efficient quarterback and the play-calling being adjusted to help that offensive line. Here’s what I mean.
Pressures can be reflective of the offensive line, yes, but the quarterback certainly shares responsibility if they hold the ball too long, etc. To give a better understanding of who is responsible, PFF also has a stat that covers quarterback-owned pressures. As you’ll see, in 2023, Jordan improved significantly in the number of pressures he was responsible for. The number in parenthesis is the percentage that the offensive line was credited with being responsible for which peaked in 2023.
When Jordan went down with injury, in stepped Tate and Brock. Tate was pressured on 34.5% of dropbacks vs. Florida but had a ridiculously high responsibility rate at 31.6%. It’s worth noting that UF was not great at getting to the quarterback finishing 101st in sacks in 2023. In the ACC title game, Brock was pressured on a whopping 53.6% of his dropbacks. The offensive line really struggled to protect him and Brock took some big shots. In the bowl game, although FSU was severely depleted, the starting offensive line was intact. Glenn faced pressure on 41.4% of dropbacks in that game. Brock had a much lower ownership percentage in those two games at just 16.7%.
So, the point is that while Jordan had a career-low pressure rate of 27.7% in 2023, without Jordan, the pressure rate jumped to an average of 43.2%. Playcalling also helped to hide the deficiencies. Throughout his time as a head coach (now in year 9), Mike Norvell has only had a screen pass percentage of over 20% once. Want to guess what year that was? You got it, 2023, which was at 22.3%. Note that PFF data only goes back to 2014, which works well for a 10-year time frame for this article. In the two additional years, I was able to pull from his time as an OC at ASU, neither season had a screen pass percentage above 13%.
Now you might be thinking, “Well DJ holds the ball too long, so he probably has a high percentage of pressure ownership!” Not quite, at least according to PFF. So far in 2024, DJ is credited with being responsible for only 13.5% of pressures, which is actually the lowest percentage of any FSU quarterback since 2020. Yet, he’s faced a higher pressure percentage than Jordan Travis did in any year from 2020-2023, and he hasn’t even faced the best defenses on the schedule yet. The screen pass percentage for DJ of 15.4% is also the second lowest of Mike Norvell’s 9-year head coaching career, so he’s not getting much help from his playcaller, either.
DJ has been sacked 6 times in the past 2 games, and while he does move slow in the pocket and have poor sack avoidance skills, his pressure-to-sack percentage of 14.9% is only 0.8% higher than the much more elusive Jordan Travis’ was 14.1% in 2023. That percentage is also lower than Tate or Brock had in 2023.
PFF has a stat for pass blocking efficiency which grades the offensive line as a whole and ranks them based on their efficiency grade. Let’s take a look at where FSU’s line has ranked in the Power 5 (69 teams)
Memphis is not a Power 5 team, but in case you were wondering, if I take their grades and plug them into the Power 5 rankings, here is where they would have finished during Norvell’s tenure.
I want to circle back to where I said this wasn’t meant to be an indictment on Alex Atkins because FSU has had offensive line issues for a long time. Remember we said that a starting UGA quarterback hadn’t faced a pressure rate over 30% and Clemson only twice in the past 10 years. Over that same span, FSU starting quarterbacks have only faced a pressure rate UNDER 30% twice. That was 29.1% in 2014 and 27.7% in 2023, which also happens to be the two best seasons over those 10 years. I hope I’m painting a good enough picture of how this correlates. Additionally, here are the offensive line efficiency rankings among Power 5 teams for FSU from 2014-2020 before this staff arrived.
The two teams we’ve used for comparison have won 4 national titles over that 10-year span. In their title years, their OL efficiency rankings were as follows. Also, keep in mind during three of these four years only one quarterback ran for over 260 yards.
During Clemson’s 6 year run of making the playoffs, their OL efficiency ranked in the Top 15 every year. UGA has made the playoffs 3 times since its inception and in two of those three years won a title. Those two seasons also happen to coincide with the two years they ranked in the Top 10 in pass-blocking efficiency. FSU has only ranked in the Top 50 three times in the past decade and one of those was 49th.
This shows us two things. First, if you want to be elite, you need elite play in the trenches. Second, FSU’s success has been almost directly tied to its OL play, which has struggled for a long time. Remember, the only two years in the past decade that an FSU quarterback faced a pressure rate under 30% and the OL finished in the top 35 in pass block efficiency were the only two years FSU won the conference and did not lose multiple games in a season (2014 & 2023).
Another area I want to examine is run blocking because that is a big part of an offense being successful. We’ll make this part shorter and more focused. FSU has been flat-out embarrassing at trying to run the ball in 2024. They currently rank 133rd of 134 teams in rushing offense, but the signs of struggle started showing up last season.
First, let’s rewind and look back at the rushing offenses Mike Norvell had at Memphis from a yards-per-game standpoint (number in parenthesis = average rushing attempts per game).
When we look at how FSU has run the ball under Norvell, it has been pretty good up until last season. In fact, 2023 was Mike Norvell’s lowest per-game average dating all the back to his time as the offensive coordinator at Arizona State.
Perhaps one of the most concerning stats is the number of games that FSU has been held under 100 yards rushing. While at Memphis, Norvell’s offenses were held to fewer than 100 yards just 6 times in 4 years (53 games excluding the 2019 bowl when he was no longer the head coach). This next number is truly alarming. FSU has been held under 100 yards rushing in 7 of its last 17 games, dating back to 2023.
They have only rushed for over 100 yards one time (vs. FBS teams) in 6 games since Jordan Travis got injured. The only game they did top the 100-yard mark was against Louisville in the ACC title game, but 76 of that came on came on one play when Lawrence Toafili was in the wildcat. If you exclude that one play because there was a running back at quarterback, FSU has not rushed for over 100 yards since Jordan Travis got injured.
While the signs of offensive line issues began to re-emerge in 2023, it’s been a full-blown disaster in 2024. FSU has the lowest yards per carry average against every opponent they’ve played except for (FCS) VMI vs. Georgia Tech. Even FCS North Alabama had a higher YPC average against Memphis than FSU, and FCS Duquesne outrushed FSU vs. Boston College. FSU’s 2.2 yards per carry is the lowest in all of Power 4.
Florida State’s offensive line was a disaster when Atkins arrived. In 2018 FSU was held under 100 yards on 6 occasions and 5 times in 2019. The ground game improved in the first 3 years aided by Jordan Travis’ legs with 559 yards in 2020, 530 in 2021, and 417 in 2022. In 2023, Jordan only put up 176 yards on the ground on just 9 fewer carries than in 2022 and his YPC was cut in half from the previous year finishing with a career-low 2.4 YPC.
In 2023, and so far in 2024, it has without a doubt regressed despite being one of the most experienced offensive lines in all of college football. (#1 in experience in 2023 and #3 in 2024). We know that Atkins has been serving a three-game suspension and will return vs. Cal this Saturday, so I’ll be interested in seeing how the unit improves. At the same time, he has been allowed to coach every day except for game day, so I’m not sure how much improvement I expect to see.
To once again bring this full circle, let’s go back to our previous comparison and look at games with fewer than 100 rushing yards between FSU, UGA, and Clemson. As previously mentioned, FSU has been held under 100 yards rushing 7 times in the past 17 games (8 if you discount the wildcat run in the ACCCG). Getting held under 100 yards happens, but when it becomes a pattern or you can’t compensate for it through passing or defense, it becomes a problem. FSU has been held under 100 yards more than twice in season 6 of the past 8 seasons dating back to 2017, the start of the decline.
In those 8 seasons when FSU was held under 100 yards, they were 6-19 in those games. Half of those 6 wins came in 2023 when FSU beat Clemson in overtime, a bad Miami team by 7 at home with a freshman backup making his first start, and Florida when the defense won that game by holding the Gators to just 232 total yards. Without Jordan Travis and a dominant defense in 2023, the only other game they were held under 100 yards was the 60-point blowout in the bowl. I understand the circumstances surrounding that game but without those two factors, FSU is 3 and 19 when rushing for less than triple digits since 2017.
Looking at UGA, to get to 7 games held under 100 yards rushing, you have to go all the way back to 2018 (7 seasons including 2024), and in one of those games they ran for 99. In those 7 games held under 100 yards since 2018, UGA is 4-3 and they’ve only lost 8 games in that span. However, for the most part, they have been able to compensate as FSU did in 2023. Last season they were held to 99 yards vs. Ball State, but held them to 224 total yards and won in blowout fashion. The only other game they were held under 100 was their only loss of the season which came against Alabama in the SEC title game. The two times they were held under 100 yards in 2020, they threw for over 400 yards in both games and narrowly won both games.
In 2019, they beat Texas A&M with less than 100 yards but held them to 274 total yards. However, in the other game in 2019 when they weren’t able to compensate with 400-yard passing or a dominant defensive performance, they lost by 27 points to LSU. In both years they won the title, they ran for triple digits in every game. The last time UGA was held under 100 yards more than twice in a season was 2010, which also happens to be the last time they had a losing season (6-7).
Finally, let’s look at Clemson, our other comparison team. The Tigers have already been held under 100 yards once in 2024, which resulted in a 31-point blowout loss to UGA, so we could just stop there. To get to 7 games under 100 yards for the Tigers, you must count back to 2020. The last time Clemson was held under 100 yards rushing more than twice in a season was in 2017. In games held under 100 yards since 2017, Clemson is 3-8. I hope you’re starting to see a pattern here. Lastly, when talking about compensating, in their 2016 title year, they were held under 100 yards twice. Once was their only loss of the season, a 1-point upset vs. against Pitt, even though they threw for 580 yards! The only other time was against Alabama in the title game, but they threw for 420 yards and won on the last play of the game.
So, what this tells us is to be successful at the level we want to be, you need to either run for triple digits in almost every game or be able to compensate with a dominant defense or airing it out. The problem is, FSU has only thrown for over 400 yards twice since 2017 whereas Clemson has done it 9 times. UGA has only thrown for over 400 yards 5 times since 2017, but they have had a top-10 scoring defense in 6 of those 8 years, so they don’t really have to rely on the offense to begin with. Even in the two years they were top 10, they finished 14th and 16th. Clemson has had top 5 scoring defense in 4 of those 8 years before the beginning of their recent decline. FSU has only finished top 20 in scoring defense in two of the past 8 years.
I know we are talking about three entirely different programs from a success-on-the-field standpoint, but that is why we are comparing them. FSU has a high standard and belongs in the conversation with where those other two programs have been and that is where we want to be. There is more than the offensive line holding us back, which we can address at another time, but it seems to be one of the biggest and longest-standing issues with this program.
With Florida State’s offense being one of the worst in the country this season, everything gets put under a microscope to figure out what the problem is. The most popular, and easy thing to do is simply blame DJ Uiagalelei. I’ve been guilty of it myself. Now to be fair, he has not played well and doesn’t appear to be an emotional leader of this team, either. The guys around him don’t seem to trust him and frankly neither does the coaching staff. I’ve been one of the loudest voices calling for a change, however, I’ve also been one to say that he is far from the only problem on this offense.
DJ is guilty of making plenty of mistakes, but he’s getting no help from anyone around him, recalling the pressure and dropped pass number we covered in the opening. That would make life tough for any quarterback. This article wasn’t intended to defend DJ but rather to expose the deeper-rooted issue that I believe is holding FSU back, and that’s the offensive line.
These problems have been around for quite some time and it’s concerning that FSU hasn’t been able to field a top-tier offensive line in the past decade. 2022 was the best and honestly only good season the offensive line has had since probably 2014. Their ability to run opened up a lot for the passing game. In 2023, the passing game compensated for the struggles on the ground. In 2024, neither is working, so the weaknesses are being exposed at an extreme level and there is no longer a dynamic quarterback to cover some of it up. As did Jordan Travis, think about how many bad offensive lines Dalvin Cook covered up during his time at FSU. FSU simply doesn’t have someone as special as either of them, but still has a bad offensive line.
Think of this like a tree with the offensive line being the roots and the skill positions being the branches. If you have healthy roots, a dead limb here or there is no big deal. You remove it a new one grows and life goes on. However, if the roots are dead, the branches will not flourish no matter what you do. Of course, you can have branches that are fruitful enough to hide the rooting roots until the decay catches up, so you may not know the roots are bad for many seasons. Eventually, as we see with 2024 FSU, the branches are not fruitful enough to hide the decay in the roots any longer.
I like Alex Atkins, but it’s fair to question what we’re doing at the position because while the recruits being signed look good, the long-term progression of those recruits and the overall development tell another story.
FSU has signed 12 high school offensive linemen under Atkins from 2020-2023. So far, only one (Robert Scott Jr.) has started more than one game, only two have played more than 50 snaps in a season (Scott and Jaylen Early), and 7 of them are no longer on the roster. One could argue that Early is only seeing the field because Jeremiah Byers has been injured and Robert Scott hasn’t been playing well since his return.
Florida State has a long-standing issue in the trenches as we’ve discussed. The stats and numbers tell a story that is quite concerning. To put the icing on the cake FSU has only put one offensive lineman in the NFL in the past 8 years and he only played in one game throughout a 4 year career that consisted of time mostly spent on practice squads.
Can Atkins get this unit turned around? Will any of his high school recruits start to pan out? Is it time for a change? These are all fair questions to be asked with FSU in its current state. There have been 3 other coaches over the 10-year span who couldn’t fix it. Five of FSU’s top guys are redshirt seniors and a sixth is a senior, so they will likely be in a full rebuild next year. Who will be ready to step into those roles because it appears that Jaylen Early is the only one who will have experience besides Alabama transfer TJ Ferguson who has not played well.
There are a lot of questions to be answered about a problem that has been plaguing this program for the better part of a decade. Being dominant in the trenches is what separates college football’s elite from the rest of the pack. If FSU wants to return to where the standard has been set, this is a glaring problem that has to be fixed. Recruiting a mobile quarterback would be helpful, but fixing the troubles in the trenches is the ultimate solution.
In hindsight, Jordan Travis might be one of the best quarterbacks to ever wear garnet and gold when you realize what he covered up. FSU averaged 40.1 PPG with Jordan as the starting quarterback over the past two seasons and just 14.8 PPG without him. The win/loss record tells the same story. I hope I at least provided a good and clear understanding of what I feel is the root cause of the offensive struggles, especially in 2024. It may be a combination of many things, but it stems from the issues up front. Thanks for reading and Go Noles!
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