Florida State 59, Texas State 16: What We Learned

[caption id="attachment_18326" align="alignleft" width="300"]Photo by Mike McNabb Photo by Mike McNabb[/caption] Texas State opened its 2015 campaign with quite a challenge, falling to the No. 10 Florida State Seminoles in Tallahassee. What can we take from this game? DCTF's Greg Tepper breaks it down.Texas State is not on Florida State’s level. Florida State is a year removed from winning the national championship. Texas State is three years removed from moving up to FBS football from FCS. These are two programs that are, for all intents and purposes, on different planets. There’s no shame in Texas State getting its doors blown off by Florida State, because frankly, Florida State isn’t in Texas State’s weight class. The Seminoles’ program has a 65-year head-start on the Bobcats’, and that showed on Saturday night in Tallahassee. Texas State needs to keep its head up.Tyler Jones needs some help. Texas State had 300 total yards in their game against the Seminoles — and, realistically, about 200 yards in non-garbage time. Quarterback Tyler Jones accounted for 139 of those yards. For most of the game, if Tyler Jones wasn’t making a play, a play wasn’t getting made. The other offensive skill players expected to help out the Bobcats’ offense — especially running backs Robert Lowe and Chris Nutall — were a non-factor in Tallahassee. Tyler Jones is a special talent, and a guy capable of putting a team on his back, but the Bobcats will be a much more dangerous squad when the entirety of their weaponry helps out, not just Jones.The Bobcats need to work on their pursuit. I don’t have the stats in front of me, but I’d wager that of Florida State’s 636 yards on Saturday night, a cool 450 of them came after first contact. Too often on Saturday night, a single defender — usually Demetrius Woodard or Stephen Smith, the two standouts defensively for the Bobcats — would confront the ball-carrier, miss a tackle, and it was off to the races for an extra 10-15 yards. There was little gang-tackling going on, especially in the second half, and that’s something that clearly needs to improve as the Bobcats head toward games against more beatable foes.