Florida State’s offense still has plenty to clean up, but the Seminoles have found something useful in back-to-back road wins: a pass protection setup that lets Ashton Daniels get the ball out and keep drives alive.
That showed up again Friday night in Pittsburgh, where FSU left Acrisure Stadium with a 16-10 victory. The line did not turn the offense into a finished product - Florida State still finished with 260 total yards and went just 3 of 13 on third down - but it gave Daniels a cleaner runway than the Seminoles have had at other points this season.
The quarterback noticed it.
“It’s been great,” Daniels said. “Our line, starting with the center, stepping up…that’s a big, big role.
I’m very, very proud of those guys. They’ve really stepped up these last couple weeks.”
The numbers back that up. Against Boston College, Florida State’s blockers were charged with three pressures: one quarterback hit and two hurries.
Xavier Chaplin posted an 87.3 pass-blocking grade, while Paul Bowling finished at 86.7, Nate Pabst at 85.7 and Chavez Thompson at 81.6. None of those four allowed a pressure.
Pitt was a little trickier to sort through. The official game stats credited Daniels with two sacks for 16 yards, but Pro Football Focus did not assign any sacks or quarterback hits to FSU’s blockers. In PFF’s charting, the Seminoles allowed only two hurries, both on Chaplin.
That doesn’t make the sacks disappear. It just means the official stat sheet and PFF’s blocking grades are telling two different stories about those plays. Without breaking each snap down individually, there’s no reason to guess at where the blame lands.
What is clear is that the line mostly held up. Andre Otto led the group against Pitt with an 86.1 pass-blocking grade.
Bowling followed at 85.8, Pabst at 84.8 and Thompson at 82.4. All four finished the night without an attributed pressure.
Bowling and Pabst, in particular, have been steady across the two road games. Neither was charged with a pressure in either report. That kind of consistency matters, even if the offense around them is still searching for rhythm.
Interim head coach Rick Stockstill said the staff has helped the line by changing the way the offense asks it to work.
“I think probably the big thing that helped us was we sped up his read,” Stockstill said. “We tried to get the ball out of his hands a lot quicker.”
That has meant quicker answers and less strain on the protection.
“We moved the pocket a little bit,” Stockstill said. “We threw some screens in there to try to keep them off balance a little bit. Probably a combination of all that.”
The PFF numbers reflect that shift. Bowling and Pabst had 15 true pass sets against Boston College, but only seven against Pitt. That category leaves out screens, play action, short dropbacks and other non-traditional passing situations, which makes the sample smaller but also lines up with Stockstill’s point: Florida State has been changing the terms of the battle up front.
There is still plenty left to fix. Chaplin’s grade dipped to 59.9 against Pitt, and the Seminoles are not suddenly a polished offense because the protection improved. But the last two games have shown something worth keeping.
“I’m proud of those guys for just showing up and putting the work in every single day,” Daniels said. “We knew that Pitt was going to bring a whole lot of pressure and a lot of hard looks for us to pick up, and I think we did a great job of doing that all night.”
For now, Florida State’s line has done its job: it has given Daniels a chance.
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