Two weeks ago, Florida State was coming off a game in which it scored seven touchdowns against a top 10-ranked Clemson team.
Now, the Seminoles are dissecting a two-game stretch in which they’ve scored three touchdowns total and six times had to settle for Dustin Hopkins field goals.
“We have to get back to what we were doing well,” quarterback EJ Manuel said.
FSU was able to overcome a less-than-stellar offensive effort against South Florida on Sept. 29, keeping its perfect season intact. But when the offense completely shut down during the second half Saturday at North Carolina State, the Seminoles allowed the Wolfpack to climb back into the game and walked off the field with their first loss of the season.
Coach Jimbo Fisher remains confident his offense — still ranked 14th overall nationally and seventh in scoring — despite a second half in Raleigh in which it punted five times and turned over the ball once on an interception.
Fisher has even done an about face from his postgame comments, when he said he may have been too conservative in his play calling. On Monday, he said he would not have changed a thing and that includes calling five running plays and one pass in the two series prior to NC State’s game-winning touchdown.
“I don’t regret making any of the calls,” he said. “I regret we didn’t execute like we should.”
“Sometimes it happens,” Fisher continued about the lack of execution. “Sometimes things gradually slip. I think it’s a matter of focus. You play six, seven games, things are going well, you feel good, you kind of … ‘I can do this.’ Maybe you just slip a hair mentally. I think that’s human nature in everybody.”
Manuel does not believe the team was distracted.
“I just think those plays when we needed to make them we didn’t make them,” he said.
Fisher defended running the ball late in the game considering Chris Thompson was averaging 7.1 yards per carry the first three quarters. Thompson, though, gained just 7 yards on seven carries in the final quarter, finishing with 141 yards.
Manuel, though, was expecting the offense to be more wide open, especially after seeing Miami’s Stephen Morris slice the N.C. State pass defense for 566 yards the previous week, completing 26-of-49 passes.
Manuel threw for just 218 yards against the Wolfpack, completing 17- of 29 passes.
Manuel was asked Monday if he was “licking his chops” after watching film of Miami’s 44-37 victory over NC State.
“I was,” he said. “We didn’t throw the ball as much as I thought we would have.”
One issue the last two weeks has been settling for field goals and not finishing drives with touchdowns. FSU remains third in the ACC and 24th nationally in red-zone offense — scoring a touchdown or field goal on 34 of 38 chances inside the 21. But three times in the first half Saturday the Seminoles had to settle for field goals, the same number as the week before at South Florida, although one of those was the final seconds of the first half.
“If we have those touchdowns instead of three points we’re up three or four touchdowns,” Manuel said.
Fisher, though, is right when he says the execution was not crisp in the second half Saturday.
Each of FSU’s six second half series — not including the final series that ended with three desperation passes — was derailed by one badly executed play that resulted in either negative yardage or missed opportunity.
Twice, Manuel overthrew an open receiver that would have extended drives (or resulted in a touchdown) and four of those series included plays that lost yardage.
“Each guy had a play or two here and there, five or six different guys, which hurt us in key situations,” Fisher said. “It was execution when you get right down to it and after watching the film I’m not discouraged, I’m very encouraged. Everything is very fixable.”
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