Mike Norvell reveals key areas Florida State must improve in ACC play

Florida State suffered its first loss of the season at the hands of No. 22 Wake Forest 31-21 during Week 5’s ranked ACC matchup. Now 2-1 in the conference and third in the Atlantic division behind No. 5 Clemson and No. 22 Syracuse, Seminoles head coach Mike Norvell discussed what his team needs to do this weekend to get his team back on track.

“For us, it just been finishing drives,” Norvell said. “When you look back at the year, we’ve had some missed opportunities. We’ve had some things that haven’t gone gone well in opportunities to score points there whether we’ve had a couple of misses, we’ve got a turnover and just things that you can’t have when you’re down there. We’ve had some opportunities where we’ve dropped balls, I mean, it’s really a combination of all – just playing clean football.

“We just need to get back to making sure we’re finishing drives. Last game, we had three or four trips in the red zone, [which results in] more touchdowns, which is what we want. That’s kind of the benchmark. You’ll obviously want every one of them, but we had a missed opportunity and so I think [last week] was a positive step for us. But we need to make sure especially this week that every opportunity we get down in the red zone, we’ve got to capitalize on it.”

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Florida State allowed the Demon Deacons’ offense to score 28 unanswered points between the first and third quarters in last week’s matchup. The Seminoles scored on the game’s opening series, but could never find a rhythm while Wake Forest built up an insurmountable lead.

The next offensive drives of the first half for Florida State saw three punts, a fumble and a missed field goal. They did outscore Wake Forest 14-10 in the second half, but that was after the Deacons took their foot off the pedal.

Norvell’s Seminoles will look to get back on track this weekend for their Week 6 matchup against No. 14 NC State, another a second consecutive top-25 task for a Florida State team coming off its first loss of the season. Kickoff is set for 8 p.m. ET live on the ACC Network.