Greg McElroy details what has made Florida State one of the biggest surprises in college football

Florida State was surprising for the wrong reasons last season. Now, with how they’ve started over the first month of the season, Greg McElroy has the Seminoles as one of the biggest surprises, for the right reasons this time, so far this year.

McElroy looked back at the first month of this fall on ‘Always College Football’ earlier this week. FSU was the first amongst his surprises to this point, with the ‘Noles at 3-1 overall already after last year going just 2-10.

“We will start with the Florida State Seminoles,” McElroy said. “Now, a lot of people are probably going to look at our list and they’re going to lose their mind because they are currently acting as prisoners of the moment. We are looking at this holistically. We are looking at this from a big-picture standpoint with where we thoughts teams were going to be versus where teams currently are.

“Florida State might top the list with the emphatic victory against Alabama in week one, and then they go on after that and have a couple more great performances. And, while things came up short against Virginia, if you were to tell me in the preseason that Florida State and Miami would be on ABC, one of the premier matchups of the weekend? I would have said I don’t know about that.”

Few teams, if any, had a more enjoyable start to this season than the one down in Tallahassee. They exceeded last year’s win total through three games, with it highlighted by their two-score opening win in an upset of No. 8 Alabama. That took a bit of a hit last week as Florida State lost its first game of the season in double overtime during its conference opener on the road against Virginia. Still, all in all, the Seminoles will more than take their record of 3-1 with what they showed on both sides of the ball over September.

“They have a quarterback. They have improved in some areas offensively in ways that I never thought they would have,” McElroy said. “And I also think, while last week may be a blip on the radar, I think that defense is actually still quite good. We’ll see. We’ll see. Here in time to come, will they respond adequately to the disappointment last week at the hands of Virginia? We’ll find out.”

Florida State could take another loss this weekend and fall to winless already in league play, in a Top 20 matchup with No. 3 Miami coming to Doak Campbell. Still, that doesn’t take away from what they’ve already managed to do, especially compared to last season, this year at FSU.