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ACC QUESTION of the WEEK : What would be a successful season at Florida State?
Wins and losses are the foremost measurements of college football seasons. Teams get only 12 or 13 bites at the apple in the regular season. Some programs can — and should — be happy if they win the right games on their schedule. Consider Northwestern struggling in non-conference games but winning the Big Ten West, or Pittsburgh taking several punches but winning the ACC Coastal. Those were good seasons despite modest win-loss records because tangible prizes flowed from the wins on the slate.
A key detail about Northwestern and Pittsburgh: They are not Florida State. More precisely, they are programs which can happily accept division championship seasons with modest win-loss numbers.
Florida State is not such a program. Wins — raw numbers of wins — generally mean more than division titles.
Not conference titles and New Year’s Six bowl bids, but division titles, yes.
8-5 and a division title is not as good as 10-3 and an NY6 ticket.
The challenge for Florida State this season: Can it make up enough ground — and derive enough benefit from the installation of Kendal Briles as offensive coordinator — to reach that 10-3 mark?
Florida State fans have to live in a world where — in 2019 — the answer to that question will probably be “No.” It will be a big ask to expect Florida State to go from bowlless to a big bowl.
It’s not fun. It’s not exciting. It is like taking a swallow of NyQuil… but it will hopefully make the patient better in the long run.
2019 is a year in which 8-4 is the reasonable goal, a three-game improvement which would not mean a sexy bowl bid, but would mean that the program is back on the right track.
Just to be clear, however: 8-4 by ANY route possible is NOT the measurement of a good season. Florida State could go 8-4 yet remain stuck, benefiting more from opponents’ mistakes than its own quality. (Remember the Louisville game last year.) This has to be a “good” 8-4, meaning that it comes within a context of markedly improved play, especially at quarterback.
Fundamentally, Florida State needs at least an 8-4 season in which the offense looks coherent and cohesive. The Seminoles need to walk away from the 2019 season knowing that they are ready to be a 10-win team again in 2020, and that Willie Taggart has the program under control.
You will know what that looks like when you see it. Florida State fans might be skeptical about the “when.” They might be worried that it is a matter of IF, not when.
Hence, this is why an 8-4 season with substantially improved quarterback play and offensive cohesion is good enough for Florida State… this one time.
This isn’t most years at Florida State. This is a year for medicine… and modest improvement on the road to bigger dreams in 2020.
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