Duce Robinson out for season with torn ACL
Duce Robinson, Florida State's top receiver, is done for the season after tearing his ACL in last week's loss to Clemson, sources told ESPN.
Why Duce Robinson is trending
Duce Robinson is out for the rest of the season after tearing his ACL, sources told ESPN's Pete Thamel. Florida State's top wide receiver got hurt during last week's loss to Clemson, the Seminoles' third straight defeat. Sources described the tear as an isolated injury with no complications, which is about the only piece of good news to come out of a rough week for the program. For a team already reeling from three straight losses, that distinction still counts for something.
No return date has been reported. What we do know is that Florida State is losing its best receiver for the rest of the season at the exact moment the team is trying to find its footing under a new coaching staff. That is a lot for one locker room to absorb in a single week.
The production Florida State is losing
Robinson was not just a name filling a spot on the depth chart. He led the Seminoles with 438 receiving yards and four touchdowns this season before the injury, numbers that made him the clear focal point of the passing game. No one else on the roster put up those kinds of numbers this season.
That followed a 2025 season in which Robinson led Florida State with 1,081 receiving yards. Two years in a row, he was the receiver this offense leaned on most. Losing that kind of production in the middle of a season is not something a roster just shrugs off, especially this late in the year.
A program already in the middle of change
The injury lands in the middle of a rough stretch for Florida State. The Seminoles have dropped three straight games, and the school fired head coach Mike Norvell earlier this season. Rick Stockstill is now running the team on an interim basis. That is three major changes for this program in short order: a coaching change, a losing streak, and now the loss of its best playmaker.
A top receiver going down for the year on top of a coaching change is the kind of week that tests a locker room. The reporting here does not go beyond those facts, but the sequence speaks for itself. Taking over on an interim basis after a firing is hard enough without your top target going down the same week.
What's next for Florida State
Florida State is 3-5 overall and 1-4 in the ACC heading into this week's game at Boston College. It is Stockstill's first game as interim head coach since Norvell's firing. The Seminoles are looking for any sign of stability.
Robinson will not be part of it. There is no timetable yet for his return, so for the rest of this season Florida State plays on with a different leading receiver and a different coach than it started the year with. How the receiving room looks the rest of the way will say a lot about Florida State's final stretch.
Facts per ESPN. Opinion is the taproom's.