Notre Dame football has to recalibrate after Florida State lays massive egg

Raise your hand if you had the Florida State game marked down as the most important game of Notre Dame football’s regular season. I’ve got my hand up there as well, don’t worry.

It’s a safe bet that Marcus Freeman and his staff had that circled as one of the biggest showdowns of the season. But the Fighting Irish are going to have to recalibrate a little bit after what happened on Saturday afternoon.

Florida State went all the way across the world to lose their season opener and take a massive hit to their playoff chances. In the process, the Seminoles delivered a little bit of a blow to Notre Dame football’s calculations. At the very least, the contest between the two teams loses some luster.

Notre Dame football needs to recalibrate after FSU loses

Obviously, the Blue and Gold still need to beat Florida State. Some might say that the need to win is even bigger now as the Seminoles have no chance of entering the November 9 showdown undefeated.

Notre Dame fans had circled that game as one of the team’s only game against a team in the pre-season Top 10. There was a chance the ‘Noles were coming into that game in the Top 5 if they took care of business. Both those things could certainly still happen, depending on what happens over the next few months. But it’s less likely if nothing else.

One has to wonder what does happen with the strength of schedule at this point. Does Georgia Tech just replace FSU as the ACC team to beat? They’ll almost certainly be ranked in the Top 25 when the rest of the college football world kicks off their games next week.

They looked very, very solid in the game against Jay Norvel’s boys. It wasn’t a fluke, they outplayed Florida State after FSU’s first drive of the game. 

In the long run, this game doesn’t change whether Notre Dame football gets into the post season. But it absolutely is possible that it will change where they get in. If Florida State keeps flailing and Georgia Tech isn’t quite ready to take up the slack, we might point to this Saturday as a factor in changing things by the end of the year.