FSU had blown it.
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Much of that is thanks to Matthew Thomas, who had career highs in his first bowl game.
Although not the game either team wanted to be in when this season began, the Orange Bowl is no consolation prize for No. 6 MI and No. 10 Florida State.
Keep care of the ball: Any team that gets behind against MI is facing a gargantuan task in coming back to win, and turning the ball over to MI is the best way to fall behind. Despite having three losses through the middle of October, the Seminoles were able to finish the season strong behind increasingly improved quarterback play out of redshirt-freshman Deondre Francois.
Nick Chubb ran for 142 yards and a touchdown to power Georgia past TCU 31-23 in the Liberty Bowl and give the Bulldogs a bowl victory for the third straight year. But Carlos Becker intercepted a fourth-down pass to cinch the victory.
“I can’t be any prouder of any team I’ve coached, ” FSU’s Jimbo Fisher said. This may be another article for another day, but perhaps players sitting out bowl games will prompt a quicker expansion of the College Football Playoff, which is already desperately needed. “You play your tails off. That’s the FSU way”. After all, FSU allowed 49 plays of 20+ yards over its first eight games this year (6.1 20+ yard plays per game) before dropping that number all the way to 15 20+ yard plays over the final five games of the season (three chunk plays per game). If so, he went out with an exclamation point.
Cook broke the Florida State single-season rushing record he set a year ago, finishing with 1,765 yards.
IN used a 13-4 spurt to cut the Cardinals’ 14-point lead to 50-44 with 12:20 left, but Mitchell scored eight straight points for Louisville to make it 58-46 and the Hoosiers never got closer than seven the rest of the way.
After taking over at their own 3, the Tar Heels drove 97 yards in 10 plays and 1:11.
ORANGE HISTORY: Florida State is 4-5 in its past Orange Bowl appearances.
Michigan’s defense was statistically dominant in 2016. It delayed the entire play, but Gavin broke free down the middle of the field for a 66-yard return to the MI 34-yard-line. Instead, Allen lumbered 65 yards to the MI 34. Francois, meanwhile, threw for 222 yards but completed only 9 of 27 passes as he was relentlessly pressured by Taco Charlton and Michigan’s defensive line.
Cook said he “never thought about” sitting out the game like LSU’s Leonard Fournette or Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey.
The video makes it seem like this was just a really overzealous attempt to get Harbaugh to say something weird. Don Brown, who was poached from his defensive coordinator position at Boston College last December, has built MI into an aggressive, blitz-heavy defense – led by their All-World safety/linebacker/doer-of-good-things Jabrill Peppers.
Despite the loss, MI should finish in the top 10 of the AP Poll. But at the same time, after losing three of four games to end it, how can it be called a success?
The decision from those two running backs is partially what prompted Harbaugh and Fisher to make their statements.
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I could bore you with technical details and point out the obvious, like controlling the line of scrimmage, but I won’t.
