Final FSU play: Not a bad play call, actually

Twitter, being Twitter, is full of hot takes on the wisdom of the final play call for Florida State last night in the loss at UVA.

It didn’t work, so, naturally, you’re not finding many who are saying, hey, nice call, just didn’t work out.

I’ll go there.

Four seconds left, no timeouts, sure, you can spike the ball, and, being honest here, my first take, as the play is about to unfold, is to scream, you have to spike the ball!

What happens if you do that, though?

One, Virginia gets to reset its defense. The ‘Hoos have a timeout in the bag. They can use it to get fresh bodies on the field.

Florida State was at its best last night when it was going tempo.

What going tempo means is: keeping your personnel grouping in the game, which means the defense doesn’t get a chance to sub if you go up to the line with the next play call ready for the snap.

Virginia got caught up on the fourth quarter FSU touchdown drive with its third-and-long D stuck on the field when the ‘Noles converted, then went tempo, and caught that third-and-long defense on its heels.

So, there you are. Four seconds left.

And I’ll interject here: even if it’s six seconds left, which it could have been, had the clock operator not been a little loose with the ticker, I’m thinking the same way here.

Virginia is on its heels. There were four 15-yard penalties on UVA on this drive. Emotions had to be running high on that side of the ball.

They felt like they’d had the same won at least twice, getting fourth-down stops that then turned into conversions on awful calls by the zebras.

And here, they’ve just given up a first down inside the 5.

So, again, spike it, and you allow UVA to most likely call a timeout, regroup, get the personnel they want in the game, talk it over as to what they assume FSU is going to do.

To the play call itself, then.

It’s the play call that Bobby Bowden’s staff tried back in 1995, on that very piece of turf.

In this case, a direct snap to Cam Akers.

Nice wrinkle, with quarterback James Blackman walking to the side, feigning that he’s maybe changing the play, or calling out a blocking assignment.

Nice diversion.

Credit to Virginia for being ready, especially because coach Bronco Mendenhall said after the game that he hadn’t seen the Warrick Dunn play at the end of the ’95 game.

That Virginia D didn’t necessarily defend that one well, and it took a Herculean effort by Adrian Burnim and Anthony Poindexter to keep Dunn out of the end zone.

This Virginia D had Akers all the way. Noah Taylor gets penetration to bounce Akers further toward the sideline. De’Vante Cross makes first contact. Bryce Hall finishes the deal.

You can do any number of things in these situations, obviously.

And what FSU did here didn’t work, so, there’s that.

I have no quibble with the play call. It just didn’t work.

Column by Chris Graham