Florida State was held scoreless in the second half of the ACC championship game against a 6-7 Georgia Tech team.

Florida State lost to an NC State team that fired its coach and had five turnovers in a bowl loss to Vanderbilt.

It doesn’t get any better than the talent that’s currently on Florida State’s roster. Florida State lost three, three, of its best players to injury, including likely first-round NFL draft picks Tank Carradine and Brandon Jenkins, and leading rusher Chris Thompson, and the Noles were still deep enough to win a BCS bowl. It shouldn’t have just won this game, though, it should have put Northern Illinois away in the first quarter.

Instead, for 3½ quarters on Tuesday night, Florida State reminded fans why this was a lose-lose situation for the Seminoles. Even the most loyal of FSU fans had to be cringing at the offense’s bumbling start. In typical FSU fashion, the Noles managed to rack up 534 yards of total offense and only convert on three of 14 third downs.

You think Mark Stoops would be happy if his old defense held its opponent to just 100 yards but gave up 30 points?

“We didn’t score points, but we moved the ball,” Fisher said. “We had 428 yards in less than three quarters. We just broke the school record this year for total yardage in a single season, the most yardage by an offense in Florida State history.

“I don’t know what we were tonight, where it was, but this offense, we’ve been very proud of it,” he said. “… I think we’re right there, and I think we had to get on this platform and understand that we have to go win the championship, you