A Numbers Nightmare: The Stunning Fall Of The 2024 Florida State Seminoles
Nothing but sadness since December 3rd, 2023
Its late into the night of December 2nd, 2023. Braden Fiske puts the nail in the coffin by sacking Jack Plummer on 4th and 3 to give Florida State its first ACC Championship since 2014 (my freshman year at FSU). After losing Jordan Travis two games before this championship, it felt miraculous we were even in this situation.
After a big primetime football game, it can take me a little bit to fall asleep. I like to decompress and get all of my thoughts in a row before eventually falling asleep. I can remember being equal excited that after nearly a decade of being stuck in the mud we were finally back on top, and also nervous about the future of the team post Jordan Travis (those nerves were of course, completely reasonable). Above all, though, one thought was inescapable…. “they really wouldn’t leave out an undefeated Power 5 champion…. right?”
As much as I hate to say it, a part of my college football fandom died the second I saw Alabama occupying the last slot in the 2023 College Football Playoff. Should I get over it? Probably. But that was my alma mater being told your undefeated Power 5 season meant nothing because you lost your starting QB (despite it not mattering for 2014 Ohio States selection). Up until that moment, the prevailing thought for the entire 4 team playoff era was “well if you just win, there is no debate”.
Anyway, not to make this all about 2023, but I wanted to set the stage for my feelings about college football heading into 2024. While I wasn’t as excited, I knew FSU was still going to be good. In the 2024 preseason, Vegas set the Seminoles win total at 9.5 wins. According to 247’s Team Talent Composite, which uses recruiting and portal ratings to measure team talent, we were the 13th most talented team in the FBS. Would we go undefeated? Probably not, but we should still be in ACC contention which would earn us an automatic bid into the playoffs, there would be no more snubs. It should still be a fun season……..
2024 Preseason Win Totals vs. Actual Wins
Welp! Pretty easy to spot Florida State on this one. The 2024 Seminoles went 2-10, which is the 3rd lowest win total for a FSU team in their 71 year history. In terms of SRS (simple rating system, basically how many points a team is above or below an average team), the 2024 team was the 5th worst in team history at a -5.14 (the 2020 team, first year under Mike Norvell, finished -8.87 which was the 2nd lowest in team history). Comparing their actual win total to their preseason projected win total, they stick out like a sore thumb.
The 7.5 win difference between preseason win totals and actual wins represents the lowest wins under expectation based on the win totals I have for teams from the 2015 season to 2024 (I exclude 2020 because of covid and the games cancelled). For a team that has won national championships and wants to be seen as one of the elite, the only team that compares here is 2016 Notre Dame.
247 Team Talent & Wins
Well what about Team Talent? Yeah it doesn’t get that much better. 247 Team Talent ratings go back to the 2015 season, and as you can see no team as talented on paper as Florida State performed at a lower level.
If you isolate it to teams with a 247 team talent rating of 850 or better (a top 15 team essentially) the 2024 Noles are 2+ wins lower than anyone else on the list. These 7 teams are the only teams in the team talent era to finish lower than .500 despite having a top 15 team on paper.
Season Simulations
Before the season started, I simulated the year 1000 times to get preseason win projects. If we look back to Florida States season simulations, you can see they were projected to win, on average, 9.31 games in 2024. A shade under their win total projections in 2024, but still a 9 to 10 win team. There were no projections that had them as a two win team!
Of course when we look at every teams’ projected wins based on the simulations, FSU comes in with the lowest wins under expectation. Oklahoma State finished with the 2nd lowest wins under expectation, followed by an Arizona team that had high expectations with Noah Fifita and Tetairoa McMillan.
These simulations use preseason consensus power ratings, but what if we used the power of hindsight bias and used postseason power ratings? In the preseason, Florida State had a 17.7 consensus power rating, which meant they were projected to be 17.7 points better than an average FBS team on a neutral field. By the time the season was finished, the Noles fell to a -3.6 power rating. Needless to say the 21.3 point drop was the most by any team this past season.
The power of hindsight bias does get us closer to the actual win total, but even with this power our average win projections were still a full win off of the actual total of 2. I hope at this point you realize just how rare a season like this is, not just for an elite football program, but for any program in general!
How were they this bad on the field?
Lets start with the offense, which fell off of a cliff from the 2023 season. In terms of numbers you can see the biggest culprit was in the passing game. The passing offense relies on hitting deep explosive passes down the field, which was not found in the 2024 season. On passes traveling 20+ yards downfield in 2024, Florida State's 24.0% completion percentage ranked 127th in the FBS. While some of the blame can be placed on the QB situation going from Jordan Travis to DJ Uiagalelei/Brock Glenn/Luke Kromehoek, consider the following DJU comparison thanks to the QB Spider graph tool I created:
Oregon State was able to get the absolute most out of DJ by providing him with a dominant run game, and then layering in play action passes on top of the run game. As you can see on the table, FSU ranked 126th in EPA/Rush. The offensive line, which was considered to be a strong point in the preseason, helped produce only 0.7 rush yards before contact, the lowest mark of any offense in the FBS in 2024. In 2023, FSU produced 1.8 rush yards before contact, 70th in the FBS (Oregon State ranked 37th at 2.1 rush yards before contact).
The 2023 defense carried this team to an ACC championship, but in 2024 they to fell off in a similar fashion to the offense. While the run defense stayed mostly the same, the pass defense took a giant step back. Losing Jared Verse & Braden Fiske as pass rushers was too much to overcome, let along losing Renardo Green and Jarian Jones in the secondary. In 2023, Florida State generated pressure on 39.9% of pass plays, 9th highest in the FBS. In 2024, that number dropped to 32.8% (56th).
Time to go cry in the corner
So yeah…. that was the 2024 Florida State season. From December 3rd 2023 to now its just been pain after pain as a FSU alum & fan. I have no idea where we go from here in terms of FSU to be honest. With the rise of the transfer portal, teams that have to over rely on the talent they acquire may find themselves in a similar situation to FSU over the past two seasons. It may not be as extreme as this fall from the top, but we could still see massive swings in wins year over year.
While my college football fandom has taken some permanent damage hits over the past year and a half, I still enjoy the national stories the game has to offer. Plus, we have the NFL draft coming up in under a month! You can expect an article or two on the NFL draft this month. Thats all I have for now, Im going to go lie down.
Lily Donation Fund
In October our lives upside down for a moment as our little cat was sick. After some extensive care and a really rough surgery, she has been recovering well and back to being our tubby little girl.
I hate that I have to do this but this whole ordeal was rough financially for us. If you enjoy the articles and wish to help (which you 10000% do not have to if you do not want to) I left the link to the GoFundMe up above.
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In performance against strength of schedule (PASS, an objective rating formula) it was #7 Texas, or perhaps #5 Washington who should draw the ire here instead of #2 Alabama. Those were the ranks at the end of the regular season, where FSU sat #4.
That a decision could be made upon intangibles like an injury to one player is at odds with other criteria like being a conference champion. The NCAA is perhaps the world's oddest (and most broken) sporting entity.
Love the article. I think that the first graph would be more intuitive with the axis swapped, so that tasks want to be above the line of unity target than below it. What is odds adjusted win total?