Final score: Florida State 35, Syracuse 17

The Syracuse Orange needed a win against the Florida State Seminoles to stop the bleeding on a season that’s fallen well short of expectations. Instead — perhaps as expected — SU fell, 35-17 and dropped to 3-5 on the year (and 0-4 in the ACC).

Florida State was on the board quickly, leaning on Cam Akers for two touchdowns on the first two drives to take a 13-0 lead (the first extra point was blocked). Syracuse’s Andre Szmyt connected on a 50-yard field goal to make it 13-3 and momentum appeared to shift toward SU in the second quarter until Szmyt missed a 46-yarder and the ‘Noles scored a late touchdown (and added a two-point conversion) to take a 21-3 lead into the half.

Cam Akers tacked on his fourth touchdown of the day earl in the third quarter to basically put the game away, then Khalan Laborn added another for good measure to make it 35-3. Syracuse finally cashed in on some offensive promise with an early fourth quarter touchdown run by Abdul Adams, and another by Moe Neal late. But obviously it was too little too late in the loss.

Though the Syracuse offensive line looked significantly better than they had in the last couple weeks, it didn’t stop Tommy DeVito from taking another seven sacks on the afternoon and numerous other hits on top of that. He was 20-of-33 for 151 yards, and could’ve had a few more completions if not for some pesky wide receiver communication issues/drops. The redshirt sophomore QB also picked up 32 yards on the ground, including a few solid gains to extend drives.

The Orange run game looked better than it has in weeks, amassing over 190 yards between DeVito, Neal, Abdul Adams and Jarveon Howard, with Neal leading the way with 74 yards and a score. Trishton Jackson led the receivers with five catches for 57 yards. Howard caught four for 24, while Neal had three grabs and Adams had two as Syracuse actually utilized the screen game more to combat the FSU pressure.

Defensively, the score doesn’t look like the defense had a good game, but they actually played pretty well in the second quarter to help keep SU in it, and created multiple opportunities for the Orange to hang around — however, the offense couldn’t take advantage. SU also missed out on a turnover for the first time in over a season and a half.

Lakiem Williams led SU with 11 tackles, including 1.5 for loss. Antwan Cordy, Kendall Coleman and Brandon Berry all had a TFL, and Josh Black had half of one. Andre Cisco (three) and Ifeatu Melifonwu (two) had all five pass break-ups for the Orange, and came close to a couple picks, too.

Oh, and Syracuse was called for 14 penalties...

So that was a bummer, though maybe the team found a couple new wrinkles for the offense they can utilize against the rest of their opponents to close out the year? Sorry, trying to find something positive to take out of this.