Florida State without Braden Fiske, Joshua Farmer for Orange Bowl

Florida State was already going to be without more than a dozen players due to opt-outs in the Orange Bowl against Georgia on Saturday. Add two more to the mix.

According to a report from Warchant.com, defensive tackles Braden Fiske and Joshua Farmer are not dressed out for the game and will miss the contest.

That will leave Florida State short on depth in the trenches on both sides, going against a Georgia team that has a minimal amount of opt-outs for the Orange Bowl game. Fiske, in particular, is a big blow for the Seminoles.

The former Western Michigan prospect has starred at Florida State, where he has racked up 43 tackles to go with 9.0 tackles for loss and 6.0 sacks across his 13 appearances and, along with fellow defensive lineman Jared Verse, earned All-American honors from the AP.

The Senior Bowl’s executive director, Jim Nagy, spoke recently about Fiske’s NFL prospects on the Andy Staples On3 show.

“I was actually talking with an NFL guy about him this morning and about that Florida State defense,” Nagy said. “He was like, ‘Man, I think the best player on the whole defense is the Fiske kid.’ And I said, well, there is a guy named Jared Verse, right?”

Fiske’s ability to dominate a game from the interior is the chief quality that will attract NFL scouts to his game.

And now it appears that Fiske will be getting ready for the next level, protecting his health by sitting out of the Orange Bowl contest for Florida State.

His versatility will be missed.

“You want to pigeonhole him as like this, you know, undersized, white, try-hard, plugger defensive tackle. And the guy is super disruptive,” Nagy said. “He can really run. I mean, that’s the thing. We’ve talked about maybe even playing him at some fullback here at the Senior Bowl. And what he is, like, it started to show up in that ACC championship game. … There was some paper production there.

“But going back over the course of the season, he’s truly one of those guys that creates for people around him. Like, he blows stuff up. He’s super disruptive with his get-off, and then, creates this chaos and then guys clean up around him. Again, usually you see a guy like him, you’re like, ‘Oh, he’s the clean-up guy.’ They’re like, ‘No, he’s actually the guy that they’re cleaning up after.’ So really a cool player. And I told him when we spoke, I’m like, man, bring that same intensity to practice. We need tone-setters during our game week to keep practices really spirited. He’s like, ‘I got you. I got you, Jim. I’ll make sure I do that.’ So we’re excited to get him here, for sure.”