Virginia exposed some holes in Florida State’s football team. No. 3 Miami ripped them open.

The Seminoles followed up their nail-biter, double-overtime loss on the road to the Cavaliers last week by losing at home to the Hurricanes, 28-22. The final score hides how out of reach the game was for most of the night, as FSU didn’t score its first touchdown until it was down 28-3 with 10 minutes left in the game.

Turnovers again hurt FSU early, but the truth is that those miscues were symptoms of FSU’s issues, not causes. FSU’s struggles on both lines of scrimmage against UVA only got worse against a championship-caliber team like Miami.

Miami’s jumbo-sized offensive line gave Canes quarterback Carson Beck the time he needed to carve up the field with effective short, intermediate, and deep passes. Miami’s four scoring drives included touchdown passes of four, 44, 40, and 24 yards.

What FSU’s defense struggled with against UVA, it outright failed at against the Hurricanes.

Entering the game, the headline battle was between FSU’s rushing attack (336 yards per game) and UM’s rushing defense (76 rushing yards per game allowed). While the Seminoles did top 76, they fell far short of their established standard. Before Miami switched to a prevent defense with a big lead in the 4th quarter, the Seminoles hadn’t even cracked 100.

In fact, while the game was still competitive, the Seminoles didn’t crack the goal line, either.

The Seminoles came into the night averaging 600 yards and 53 points per game – tops in the country. Entering the 4th quarter down by 25, they had 225 yards and three points.

To FSU’s credit, Miami is clearly one of the best teams in the country at this point in the season. They entered the night ranked No. 3 for a reason, and alongside Ohio State and Oregon, they look like one of only three truly complete teams.

Losing to Miami is nothing to be ashamed of. However, for an FSU team that had ACC Championship and College Football Playoff visions as recently as nine days ago, the way it lost is problematic.

With the exception of their too-little, too-late comeback bid, the Seminoles got run off the field in their own stadium.

FSU is still a talented team. Thanks to the 4th quarter heroics, they even managed to out-gain Miami 404-338. There is still plenty to play for.

But nothing short of perfection for the Seminoles, paired with chaos among the rest of the ACC, will be enough to realize the dreams that were in play two weeks ago.

Head coach Mike Norvell has a lot to address after this loss. They can’t look at one player, one position group, or even one side of the ball.

On defense, they need more penetration up front and better coverage in the back. On offense, FSU may have been exposed as one-dimensional when facing high-level defenses. Miami appeared to follow the Virginia blueprint of containing dual-threat quarterback Tommy Castellanos in the pocket and forcing him to pass.

ESPN/ABC color commentator Kirk Herbstreit put it bluntly after Castellanos threw his second interception: “They don’t have a sophisticated dropback passing game.”

Castellanos finished with 272 yards and two touchdowns, but 153 of those yards came in the final 10 minutes as the Noles mounted their comeback attempt. His two interceptions also came in the first three quarters.

With Castellanos unable to get the passing game going in the first three quarters, the Hurricanes were free to swarm the line of scrimmage and prevent the vaunted Noles rushing attack from ever getting into a rhythm.

FSU’s comeback attempt in the 4th quarter can’t be ignored. It was window dressing, to an extent, and it certainly falls into a bit of a garbage time gray area. But in less than one quarter, FSU scored nearly double what Miami had been giving up per game coming in.

Garbage time or not, FSU’s offense looked much more like itself in those final three drives. Just as Herbstreit saw issues with Castellanos in the first three quarters, he gave credit where it was due in the fourth.

“They made it interesting here in the fourth quarter,” he said. “That’s big for the rest of the year, especially the way their quarterback played.”

Indeed, that will be the question for the Seminoles for the rest of the year. Are they the team that led a late comeback in the 4th quarter, or are they the team that got blown off the line for the first three quarters?

FSU will have its first chance to answer that question when it hosts Pitt next Saturday. The 3-2 Panthers are coming off a 48-7 blowout of Boston College.