The defeat in the season opening game in Ireland against Georgia Tech was a huge disappointment and embarrassment for 10th-ranked Florida State.

Finally, the Seminoles have been heavily criticized on social media following their loss to the underdog Yellow Jackets, who lost by double-digit odds. Their league is embroiled in a legal battle and their fans were booing ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit until kickoff on Saturday, blaming him for their failure to make the College Football Playoffs in December.

Some people call FSU the biggest whiners in the sport and are delighted with the Yellow Jackets’ victory. Even Herbstreit couldn’t resist commenting after FSU’s loss.

The Seminoles certainly have a lot of work to do—we’ll get to that in a moment—but college football fans should know that they can rebound from an early-season loss and win the national championship.

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This has not happened in the modern playoff era (since 2014), but most recently in 1983 with Howard Schnellenberger’s Miami Hurricanes. They lost their first game in Gainesville, 28-3, to rival Florida, and then won the national championship in the Orange Bowl by defeating top-ranked Nebraska.

Miami has gotten some help from others in the polls along the way, but Florida State no longer has to worry about stupid polls. The Seminoles can fight their way to the postseason in this new 12-team playoff era by winning the ACC title or securing a spot in the standings.

Florida State finished 13-1 last year and is 0-1 this year after losing to Georgia Tech on Saturday. (Tom Maher / INPHO via USA Today)

The 2002 Seminoles would have even made the 12-team field after finishing 9-4 en route to winning the ACC championship. And ironically, it might be easier for FSU to make the playoffs this year with an immediate loss in Week 0 than it was last year, when the Seminoles finished 13-0 in the ACC championship game and still missed out.

Last season, four teams with two losses in the regular season would have made the playoffs as at-large bids: Oregon, Missouri, Penn State and Ole Miss. In 2022, eight teams with more than one loss would have made the field, including Kansas State at 10-3 and Utah at 10-3.

If you think back to 1998, in a 12-team format, 30 teams would have made it with three losses.

There’s hope for everyone in college football right now — even if you’re slow to get going like Mike Norvell’s team was on Saturday. But Florida State still has a lot of work to do if it wants to return to Charlotte for the conference championship … in every area.

Offensively, FSU rushed for just 98 yards against a Georgia Tech team that had the nation’s best run defense last season…out of 133 FBS teams. Yes, the Yellow Jackets hired a new defensive coordinator in the offseason in Tyler Santucci, but it was jarring to watch the Seminoles rush for 66 yards in the first quarter and just 32 total in the final three quarters.

FSU clearly missed its 2023 receiver corps, and even though quarterback DJ Uiagalelei had two crucial fourth-down completions in crunch time of the fourth quarter – a 20-yard pass up the middle on fourth-and-7 and a 19-yard pass on fourth-and-8 – the FSU team seemed hesitant to let him go entirely. He rushed for just 7 yards on six carries, despite his 6-foot-4, 255-pound frame making him one of the league’s most impactful running quarterbacks.

As for FSU’s defense, the Seminoles were no match for Georgia Tech’s veteran offensive line, despite entering the season with one of the most hyped defensive lines in the league. The Yellow Jackets rushed for 190 yards, an average of 5.3 yards per carry. FSU never sacked quarterback Haynes King.

The good news for FSU is that the Seminoles have time to get this right. FSU has next week off, then resumes its season with games against Boston College, Memphis, Cal and SMU before hosting Clemson on Oct. 5.

GO DEEPER

Season opener surprise: How did Georgia Tech beat FSU?

Georgia Tech may be a better team than anyone gave it credit for in the preseason, and if there’s a surprise team in the ACC that could make a splash in the conference race, it might be Brent Key’s tough, experienced squad.

With the ACC eliminating divisions and growing to 17 teams by adding Stanford, Cal and SMU, Florida State’s path to the conference title game is more complicated than it once was.

When the Yellow Jackets were in the Coastal Division and the Seminoles were in the Atlantic Division, Georgia Tech couldn’t stop FSU from going to Charlotte. Now it can. The teams with the two best win percentages in conference play meet the first weekend in December, but in the event of a tie between two teams for the second-best win percentage, the first tiebreaker is a head-to-head contest. The next tiebreaker – in the event of a tie between multiple teams – is win percentage against common opponents. But that’s a math problem for December.

What the ACC needs more than anything is a good performance against the SEC, Big Ten and Big 12 to burnish its reputation when the at-large bid battles begin.

The ACC will face the SEC 11 times, including several early big-game matches involving Georgia-Clemson, Miami-Florida and Tennessee-NC State. Last year, the ACC went 7-5 against the SEC (its first winning season against the SEC since 2016). The ACC will also play the Big Ten and Big 12 five times each.

For now, all the league — and FSU — can do is wait and see how things play out. Norvell has a tall order ahead of him, while the Yellow Jackets have plenty of momentum in Key’s second year. But the new playoffs won’t write the Noles off. … Yet.

(Top photo by DJ Uiagalelei: Charles McQuillan / Getty Images)