SMU Stuns Florida State 27-24 in Wild ACC Opener Delayed by Stadium Power Outage

Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee, where SMU and Florida State played out one of Week 1's most unusual games.

Tallahassee was supposed to host a routine ACC opener on Monday night. Instead, it delivered a two-hour power outage, a blown transformer, a stadium running on old-school instincts with no replay review or headset communication, and — eventually — a football game that lived up to the chaos surrounding it. When the lights and the dust both settled, No. 19 SMU had escaped Doak Campbell Stadium with a 27-24 win over Florida State, closing out Week 1 of the 2026 college football season.

It was not a clean win. It was not supposed to be this close. But for a Mustangs program still chasing the validation of a marquee road win in a hostile environment, ugly counts the same as pretty in the standings.

A Delay Nobody Saw Coming

Kickoff was already being counted down when a power surge knocked out lights across most of the stadium. What was billed as a brief hiccup stretched into a delay of roughly an hour and 40 minutes, according to ESPN's broadcast, which traced the failure to a blown transformer as crews scrambled to restore power. Players from both teams retreated to their locker rooms and waited.

When the two teams finally emerged, the game resumed under conditions that felt almost anachronistic for a modern power-conference matchup. No instant replay. No coach-to-player headset communication. No PA announcer. No sideline iPads for in-game adjustments. It was, in the most literal sense, old-school football — decisions made on instinct and paper, not tablets and monitors.

Given how unusual the setup was, what followed was even more remarkable: a genuinely competitive, back-and-forth ACC battle that had no business being as entertaining as it turned out to be.

Kevin Jennings Delivers a Career Night

 

A dominant offensive night from SMU's veteran signal-caller set the tone early and never let up.

If there was one player who decided this game belonged to SMU, it was quarterback Kevin Jennings. The senior, playing in his third year as the Mustangs' starter, was electric from the opening snaps, connecting with wide receiver Jalen Cooper on a blown-coverage 50-yard touchdown that opened the scoring almost immediately once play resumed.

By the time the final whistle sounded, Jennings had thrown for a career-high 430 yards and three touchdowns on 26-of-36 passing — numbers that would headline any box score, chaotic delay or not. He completed his first eight passes of the night for 120 yards, tearing through an FSU secondary that struggled to find its footing after the layoff.

It wasn't a mistake-free performance. Jennings also threw two interceptions, including a costly red-zone throw into the arms of Florida State's Nehemiah Chandler on a third-and-goal situation the Mustangs badly needed to convert. SMU turned the ball over four times total on the night, a number that, on paper, should have been enough to cost them the game against a desperate home team.

Florida State Refused to Go Away

Give Florida State credit: this was not a team that folded once the game got weird. Quarterback Ashton Daniels answered Jennings' opening score with a physical, 13-play touchdown drive capped by a 9-yard scoring run, evening things at 7-7 and setting the tone for a night where the Seminoles kept finding ways to stay within striking distance.

Running back Ousmane Kromah, a former five-star recruit and one of the most closely watched newcomers on Florida State's roster, was the engine of that resilience. Kromah carried the ball 22 times for 120 yards and a touchdown, repeatedly bailing out an offense that managed just 310 total yards and converted zero of five third-down attempts for long stretches of the game. When Florida State needed a play, more often than not it went through Kromah — a continuation of the workload he'd carried in FSU's Week 0 win over New Mexico State, where he rushed for over 100 yards himself.

Florida State also capitalized on SMU's mistakes in ways that kept the scoreboard honest. A muffed punt by SMU returner Yamir Knight handed the Seminoles a short field. An offside call negated an FSU field goal attempt and gave the home team new life on a drive that eventually produced points. Kromah's 6-yard touchdown run tied the game late, forcing SMU to answer one more time.

The Numbers Tell a Lopsided — and Misleading — Story

By total yardage, this was not a close football game. SMU finished with 515 total yards to Florida State's 310, averaging a staggering 9.0 yards per play compared to FSU's 5.1. The Mustangs' passing attack alone (380 yards on 11.9 yards per attempt) nearly matched Florida State's entire offensive output.

And yet the final score was separated by a field goal. That gap between statistical dominance and a nail-biter of a final margin is almost entirely explained by SMU's turnovers — three giveaways against a Florida State team that committed zero, according to the box score. In a sport where turnover margin is often the single best predictor of outcome, SMU winning despite losing that battle 3-0 says as much about the quality of their operation elsewhere on the field as anything else.

Why This Result Matters Beyond Week 1

For SMU, this is exactly the kind of result the program has been building toward. Under head coach Rhett Lashlee, the Mustangs have posted an 11-win season in 2023, another 11-win campaign and a College Football Playoff appearance in 2024, and nine wins last year — arguably the most successful transition into power-conference football college football has seen in recent memory. A gritty road win over an ACC program with Florida State's pedigree, even an ugly one, is the kind of data point that playoff committees and national voters remember in November.

For Florida State, the result raises more questions than it answers heading into a brutal stretch. Head coach Mike Norvell, now in his seventh season, was already facing scrutiny after a Week 0 win over New Mexico State that felt underwhelming to a fan base still processing back-to-back losing seasons without a bowl appearance. This loss to SMU means Florida State opens ACC play at 0-1, and the schedule does not get gentler from here — Alabama, Virginia, Louisville, Miami, and Clemson all loom in the coming weeks. A team that can move the ball but can't finish drives, and that just dropped a winnable home opener under admittedly bizarre circumstances, will need to find answers fast.

Final Score and Key Stats

	SMU	Florida State
Final Score	27	24
Total Yards	515	310
Passing Yards	380	125
Rushing Yards	135	185
Turnovers	3	0
Time of Possession	22:29	29:49

What's Next

SMU moves to 1-0 and will look to carry this road-win momentum into ACC play with its ranking intact, if bruised by the turnover issues that nearly cost them a game they otherwise dominated statistically. Florida State drops to 1-1 and now faces the difficult task of regrouping before conference play intensifies against a gauntlet of ranked and rival opponents.

For a Week 1 slate that had already delivered its share of dramatic finishes elsewhere in college football, SMU and Florida State managed to close things out with a game that had a little bit of everything — a power outage, a career night from a veteran quarterback, a stubborn opposing running back, and a final margin far tighter than the stat sheet suggested it should be.

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