Dan Kendra, Florida State's projected starting quarterback this season, injured himself this summer when a homemade chemical concoction he was making exploded in his face. He will sit out this season due to an unrelated torn ACL.
Chris Weinke, at 26 a true graybeard among other college football players, will be counted on to take over as the team's starting quarterback. He has not been a starting quarterback since 1989, when Florida State was still three years away from becoming the football bully in the ACC.
FSU loses a whopping total of 11 starters from last years squad. All 11 made All-ACC, and six were named All-Americans.
What does all this mean? FSU will probably run rough-shod through the ACC again and challenge for the national championship.
In this era of uncertainty in college football, only a few things are certain: Harvard won't win a bowl game, a punter won't win the Heisman and Florida State will hoard the best talent in the ACC.
So the Seminoles lose last year's starting quarterback in Thad Busby and Kendra, America's top prep quarterback in '95, tears his ACL and decides to follow in the footsteps of Ted Kaczynski: Why worry?
Weinke, the replacement, was the nation's top high school quarterback in 1989 and when Florida State head coach Bobby Bowden talks about Weinke, he might want to occasionally wipe the drool from his mouth.
"I was impressed with him the first time I saw him, which was back in '89," Bowden said. "Every coach in the country would love for their quarterback to be 26. He is too good to be true-he's 26 and he's still saying 'yes sir' and 'no sir.'
"I have full confidence in his ability, and he's so much more mature. His age gives me much more confidence in how he handles things. He's... an impressive young man, very physical looking. Boy, he looks like a Roman Gabriel-big, 225 pounds, 6-foot-5, soft-spoken, handsome. The old ladies are going to love him; he's too old for the girls."
Seminole fans, however, probably care more about Weinke's on-field than his off-field performance. Weinke can more than hold his own in that regard. Possessing great size and a slingshot for an arm, Weinke is the prototype drop-back pro passer cut in the mode of a Drew Bledsoe.
Nearly every college coveted his services when Weinke came out in '89. When FSU finally landed Weinke, everyone in Tallahassee celebrated, for about four days. That's exactly how long Weinke stayed on the FSU campus before signing a contract with the Toronto Blue Jays, who picked him with their second-round selection in '89.
After six years in the Blue Jays organization, including a two-week stint in the Major Leagues, Weinke was itching to play college football again and Bowden was tickled to death to have him back.
"People ask, 'Will Weinke be able to adapt without having played or started a game in eight years?' Well, I'm ready to play," Weinke said. "I prepared myself this summer to be ready to play, and I haven't really been nervous about it yet."
Weinke should feel very confident on the field, and he looks the part too, completing 21-of-36 passes for 207 yards, with two touchdowns and no interceptions, in FSU's season-opening 23-14 victory against Texas A&M. He spent last season learning Bowden's complex offense and steps under center this year knowing he will be protected by the biggest line in the ACC, backed by arguably the best running back in the ACC and flanked by two exceptionally talented wide receivers.
Tailback Travis Minor returns after his ACC Rookie of the Year campaign during which he gained 623 yards on 112 carries with 11 touchdowns, averaging just under six yards a carry. All-ACC wideout Peter Warrick is one of the most explosive players in football and should be Weinke's favorite target. And by the way, Warrick was also the ACC's leading punt returner last season. FSU's other wide-out, Laveranues Coles, ran the fastest 40-yard dash in school history this fall in 4.18 seconds, eclipsing the mark of 4.21 set by Deion Sanders.
Lest Weinke gets any ideas about taking his offensive line out for steak if it protects him well, he should be reminded that FSU's five projected starters average 6-foot-5 1/2 and weigh a combined 1525 pounds; that's an average of 305 lbs. and a hefty dinner tab for Weinke. Last year, the offensive line yielded only 19 sacks, compared with the 64 registered by the Seminole defense.
That Seminole defense will look different, but probably only in appearance. Bowden believes despite losing three All-Americans in Sam Cowart, Daryl Bush and Andre Wadsworth, the third overall selection in the NFL draft, his defense will be even faster, and perhaps even better.
"We've lost some top-ranked players again, but we've done that every year," Bowden said. "Our defensive unit will be faster than they were a year ago. Take a Bush at middle linebacker, the best he'll run is a 4.8, but he had a 4.1 brain. But you replace him with a guy like a Brian Allen who [runs] a 4.4. You replace a Cowart who ran a 4.6, you replace them with [Tommy] Polley or someone like that who runs a 4.5. So the speed's continuously getting [better], but the experience is not what it has been."
Considering that in the last four years the Seminoles have lost a total of eight defensive All-Americans to the NFL and have still maintained their reputation as the most ferocious defense in the ACC, one tends to believe Bowden when he says the defense won't lose its edge.
Let's see, the offense should be as explosive as always, the defense should be as good as ever and the FSU special teams should sparkle as usual-looks like more bad news for the eight schools in the ACC not in Tallahassee.
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