If Georgia Tech manages to disrupt Jameis Winston only fractionally as much as Winston unsettles himself, it may have a real chance to take down Florida State in Saturday’s ACC Championship game.
Was it the Yellow Jackets suddenly larcenous defense (17 takeaways in the past five games) that Winston noodled on at the beginning of the football work week?
Or was it his own shoddy, four-interception performance Saturday against Florida (likely the worst of a brief, Heisman-decorated college career) that occupied his initial thoughts?
No, he spent large parts of Tuesday and Wednesday in student conduct court — this one manned by a real former state supreme court justice, not by Greg Marmalard, Doug Neidermeyer and the rest of Omega House (Animal House, 1978).
And on the doorstep to a conference championship game, Winston was not reliving the least of his slip-ups. Not the great crab-leg heist nor the pellet-gun shootout nor the profane-as-it-gets student-union yelp. This was a trip back to the seamiest episode, the disputed sexual encounter from two years ago that just won’t go away.
As their quarterback sat in that hearing room in FSU’s Materials Research Building, his team waited, practice moved hours past the usual time, to under the lights.
Easy for the kicker to shrug off.
“Personally for me it doesn’t get me out of my routine, and to our team it doesn’t,” Roberto Aguayo said Tuesday. “It gave me the opportunity to go golf.”
“It’s just a later practice — it’s going to be a night game, actually it could work in our favor, practicing in the dark with the lights on,” he said.
Still, don’t you have to wonder at what point does the Winston drama — just the brightest one on FSU’s Great White Way of issues — overwhelm the Winston mystique?
His numbers are showing some signs of corrosion. A year ago, on his way to winning a BCS championship and a Heisman Trophy, Winston threw for 40 touchdowns and only 10 interceptions. Those numbers this season through two fewer games: 21 and 17. He has lost 40 points off his efficiency rating.
And as Winston has wobbled, his team has looked as fallible as an unbeaten can. The Seminoles won it all last season in a lark, with a regular-season margin of victory of nearly 43 points. They trailed in those 12 games a grand total of 37 minutes.
This year, they’ve won by a margin of 13 points per game. And trailed for a total of 178 minutes. They’ve trailed by as much as 21 points (against Louisville) and twice trailed by double digits at halftime (Miami and the Cardinals). They went OT against Clemson, with Winston suspended for his student-union outburst.
Even on game weeks when he’s not defending his character in a closed hearing, Winston isn’t available for media questions. Others take on the task of speaking for him. And they will remind you of one irrefutable fact: The cat still hasn’t lost a game in two years at FSU.
“I’ve seen a lot of people come at Jameis in a bad way. They’ve called him everything but a child of God,” said Cameron Erving, one of Winston’s literal protectors on the offensive line. “You see all the negative things; nobody sees all the good things he does.”
“He might not have the stats he had last year,” Erving said, “but he’s still a tremendous leader and a great quarterback. He knows how to win football games. He’s played good enough to win games.”
His coach will try to float the opinion that Winston in some ways this year is surpassing his otherworldly freshman performance.
“Besides the last (Florida) game — that was the only poor game he’s played — he’s played outstanding football,” Jimbo Fisher said.
“I think he’s been more outstanding (than a year ago) in the fact that he’s had to overcome so much more with the youth around him in so many different positions,” Fisher said. While his offensive line is one of the most seasoned in college football, there was significant turnover in the skill positions around Winston.
While last season’s Heisman winner is on nobody’s watch list this season, Winston’s rock solid tight end, senior Nick O’Leary, remains convinced there is no one better.
“He’s out there doing the best he can; I still think he’s the best quarterback in college football,” O’Leary said. “He’s making big plays for us when we’re needing them to be made.
“He’s always positive. We still win, and that’s all that he cares about.”
Winston has shown the gift for flipping the switch during the course of a game, going from ordinary to spectacular as the need arises. Like a thermometer on a summer day, his efficiency rating steadily rises the longer he’s out there. From 111.23 in the first quarter to 176.07 in the fourth.
That makes trying to predict which Winston the Jackets will encounter Saturday a particularly tough call. Because there are so many different versions of the guy, and they trade places willy-nilly.
On the physical side, Winston may be as stout for this game as any all season. Various ailments to ribs and an ankle have notably limited Winston’s mobility this season (rushing attempts and yardage way down from last season). Reported Fisher after practice Tuesday: “He’s running like a wild man.”
But crack his cranium, and who knows what’s going on under there?
The great question of this ACC Championship game is not how Winston will respond to Tech’s defense, but rather how he deals with the stubborn stains of his own making.
