Florida State came into the Peach Bowl without backup QB Everett Golson, who missed the game for personal reasons. And early in the first quarter, starting quarterback Sean Maguire suffered a leg injury.
Florida State’s 3rd-string QB suddenly had to play in the Peach Bowl and did not look ready at all
Florida State went down to their third-string QB. Instead of giving the ball to Dalvin Cook, they asked the youngster to throw. He didn’t.
That meant FSU had to turn to J.J. Cosentino, the third-string redshirt freshman. Cosentino was a four-star recruit out of high school and has a strong arm -- here he is throwing a football over a four-story building -- but he doesn't quite seem up to the task of playing minutes in one of the biggest bowl games of the college football season. Just take a look at what happened on his first full drive.
On first down, Cosentino dropped back to pass, didn’t see anybody open, and was hapless against Houston’s pass rush, taking a big sack for a loss of nine.
On second down, Cosentino again couldn’t find anybody, and basically walked into a Houston defensive end for another sack and loss of three.
To make matters stranger, Cosentino’s helmet came off on that play, meaning by rule he had to come out of the game for a play and Florida State called a timeout. The only quarterbacks left on FSU’s roster are Deondre Francois and Lucas Clark. Francois is a highly touted freshman who spent all year redshirting, and to play him in this game would cost him a full year of eligibility. Clark is a walk-on who literally doesn’t have a player page on FSU’s website.
Jimbo Fisher opted to take the timeout so Cosentino could play on 3rd-and-22. He missed his receiver badly, as if there was some sort of miscommunication about what route was being run.
On Cosentino’s next drive, he went 0-for-2 passing and couldn’t quite convince the center to snap the ball.
It’s kinda odd that Fisher opted to throw Cosentino into the fire with a bunch of passes instead of handing the ball off to Dalvin Cook, who’s pretty good at playing running back. Either way, after a few drives, Maguire came back into the game wearing an enormous apparatus on his leg.
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