Last Saturday the Seminoles faced their toughest opponent to date, the 25th ranked University of Maryland Terrapins (39th in F/+ rankings before the game). The Noles absolutely crushed the Terps by a shutout score of 63-0. It was a very surprising result as many thought that Maryland's offense would really give Florida State's new defense a lot of trouble, especially after a poor showing against Boston College the previous week. Despite this, the Noles played incredibly well defensively limiting Maryland's big play makers enough so that they could not score a single point in the game.
After stalling in the first quarter after an opening touchdown drive, the Seminoles' offense kicked it into high gear and the game got out of hand by the third quarter. Let's take a look at some of the hidden yardage stats in the game, they can tell us how well the Noles did in certain aspects of the game. Garbage time drives have been eliminated from the analysis.
Florida State's Offense | |||||
Result | Possible | Gained | Plays | Per Play | % Gained |
TOUCHDOWN | 77 | 77 | 10 | 7.70 | 100% |
Punt | 86 | 27 | 8 | 3.38 | 31% |
Punt | 53 | -19 | 3 | -6.33 | 0% |
Punt | 67 | -8 | 3 | -2.67 | 0% |
TOUCHDOWN | 80 | 80 | 9 | 8.89 | 100% |
TOUCHDOWN | 78 | 78 | 9 | 8.67 | 100% |
TOUCHDOWN | 94 | 94 | 7 | 13.43 | 100% |
TOUCHDOWN | 55 | 55 | 6 | 9.17 | 100% |
TOUCHDOWN | 83 | 83 | 10 | 8.30 | 100% |
Totals | 673 | 467 | 65 | 7.18 | 69% |
- 7.1 yards per play before garbage time. Oh no you guys, this mark is down from the number they put up against BC last week at 7.8. Oh well, Jameis had another fantastic outing and set some new career marks for himself with 393 passing yards and 5 passing TDs. After marching down the field on their first drive to go up 7-0, the offense sputtered and punted 3 straight times. They got it back together and scored 5 straight touchdowns (the streak kept going after garbage time set in as well).
- The offense has been pretty incredible this year. Even after getting blown out on the road, Maryland is still ranked quite high in the S&P+ defensive rankings (17th). Just in case we need further proof that this offense is awesome.
- The Noles average starting field position was at their own 25 yard line before garbage time. Not too great. If the Noles really want to get an advantage in their games they need to improve on this mark by holding on to interceptions.
- FSU only clocked in one explosive drive in this game, which is the lowest amount this season (there were more after garbage time).
- FSU was very efficient at gaining as many yards at they possibly could with 69% of possible yards gained. FSU will be hard to stop if they can keep up that kind of production.
Florida State's Defense | |||||
Result | Possible | Gained | Plays | Per Play | % Gained |
Punt | 75 | 18 | 4 | 4.50 | 24% |
Punt | 66 | 20 | 5 | 4.00 | 30% |
Punt | 89 | -1 | 3 | -0.33 | 0% |
Missed FG | 73 | 40 | 5 | 8.00 | 55% |
Punt | 64 | 20 | 5 | 4.00 | 31% |
Punt | 77 | 21 | 6 | 3.50 | 27% |
End of Half | - | - | - | - | - |
Punt | 75 | 7 | 3 | 2.33 | 9% |
Punt | 86 | 36 | 7 | 5.14 | 42% |
Fumble | 78 | 15 | 3 | 5.00 | 19% |
Totals | 683 | 176 | 41 | 4.29 | 26% |
- FSU turned in a very good defensive performance against Maryland only allowing 4.29 yards per play before garbage time. Maryland's offense is pretty good (43rd in S&P+ after losing to FSU) and incredibly explosive. We should all be pretty ecstatic about how the defense played on Saturday as it is a major improvement from how they looked against Boston College. FSU's defense is now ranked 8th in the S&P+ rankings.
- FSU only allowed Maryland to gain 26% of their possible yards. That screams shutout to me. Maryland only had one chance the whole game to put points on the board and that was off of a missed field goal in the first quarter. Maryland could not capitalize on their defense stalling FSU's offense in the first quarter.
- Maryland's average starting field position was also at their own 25 yard line. There was no advantage in the hidden yards stat for either team, which is interesting. The more of these articles I write, the more I see that FSU's offense does not care at all about field position, and the defense is starting to feel that way too.
- Cason Beatty was OK in this game. Maryland did get their best starting field position in the game after a punt. Beatty had 3 punts during non-garbage time. Maryland started on their own 11, 27, and 36 yard line after Beatty's punts. So not awful, but that punt that ended up on the 36 yard line is not good. FSU continues to limit any deficiencies we see from Beatty by simply almost never having to punt.
After the bye week, Clemson is up next, set for an 8 PM kickoff time on ABC. I will be hiding in a corner thinking of all the things that can possibly go wrong in that game (although recent F/+ numbers have me feeling a bit confident). We'll have another one of these articles rolled out for you guys after the Clemson game. Until then, go Noles.