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Henderson column: Offense Unable To Supply Support

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Joe Henderson/The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 12, 2007

WINSTON SALEM, N.C. - While the college football literati in our fair state focused on the interesting ascent of South Florida or the troubles in Gainesville, another team quietly had been going about its business.

Florida State had managed to cobble together a winning streak built on two parts defense, with dashes of smoke, mirror and a pinch of delusion.

Hey, whatever - it was working.

Alas, that formula fell apart Thursday night amid a hail of off-target passes by Xavier Lee, a running game that appeared to be in the lost luggage carousel back at the airport, and a defense that finally broke under the strain.

That's how you wind up walking off 24-21 losers to Wake Forest, as FSU did. This wasn't like last year, when we could have accused the Noles of playing dead in a 30-0 loss against the Deacons except, well, they weren't playing.

No, these Noles gave a noble enough effort.

But just when FSU fans were daring to think, maybe, it was safe to peek out from under the covers again, Jimbo Fisher's offense coughed, sputtered and finally coasted to a stop by the side of the road. No juice.

They are back to hoping for a trip to some obscure bowl to play a team only their mama's will care about.

For a while though, this game - and maybe the season - held so much more promise than that.

Had A Chance

The Noles led 14-7 until late in the third quarter, following what has now become their standard attack. They hope the defense can keep them in the game long enough for Lee, or somebody, to make a play.

It worked against Colorado. It worked against Alabama.

It might have worked here, too, if the Noles had been able to generate even a smidgen of offense.

But Lee was long, wide, short - pretty much any variant you want to come up with for off-target against a defense that was scorched for 36 points last week to, cough, Duke.

Those fans hoping that Fisher's arrival was the miracle cure missing in Tallahassee must now acknowledge that this thing can't be truly fixed without another recruiting class or two. Pity, too, because the Seminoles are playing championship-caliber defense.

Even though they gave up their longest run in more than a decade - an 83-yard touchdown run by freshman Josh Adams - you can't pin this one on Mickey Andrews' unit.

It needed help that its offense just couldn't provide.

If you can't pass, you'd best be able to run. FSU got 47 yards on 24 carries. Seventeen of those yards came on the last run in the final minute.

Well, OK then, if you can't run, then you need an accurate passer who can move the chains. Lee was just too erratic. He was 24-for-45 for 283 yards and two touchdowns, which sounds good unless you actually watched the game and saw how much statistics can lie.

Not Good Enough

Wake fans took up the chant of 'over-rated ... over-rated' as the clock wound down and, well, yeah, that's true.

FSU, now 4-2 overall and 1-2 in the ACC's Atlantic Division, can no doubt bid adieu to the national rankings. Any delusion that the Seminoles could make a run back at the Top 10 vanished in the chilly central North Carolina night.

And any sense that Fisher still has straws to grasp at vanished as well.

Down by a touchdown after Wake scored with 6:41 to play, Fisher didn't even make a pretense of trying to grind it out. He had Lee fling it deep - 'you go long' seemed to be on the first 15 pages of FSU's game plan - and, of course, it was intercepted.

By the time FSU got the ball back, just 1:40 remained and Wake was ahead by 10. And although they got a stats-padding touchdown on a 17-yard run by Lee with 17 seconds left, the Noles needed a miracle akin to the Stanford band at that point.

It did not materialize.

So now it's on to whatever fate awaits them the rest of the year.

They might beat someone they shouldn't along the way and the defense will keep them in games. But the real help? Those guys are still in high school. They should expect a call from their friendly FSU recruiter any day now.

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