Can Mike Norvell salvage 2024 for Florida State?

By Kyle Golik

If you had on your survivor poll an Oasis reunion tour having more legs than a Florida State revenge tour, you have successfully advanced to the next round. For the third time in five seasons, Florida State is 0-2 under Mike Norvell, but this time the pressure is amplified. There were ACC Championship and College Football Playoff aspirations for Florida State, now they are playing for pride and hoping for an outside shot of making it to a College Football Playoff spot.

"I'm sick to how this season started,” Novell said following a 28–13 loss to Boston College. “Tonight, I failed in preparing the team to go out and respond. You've got a football team that nobody envisioned ever being where we are and having disappointment, having failure, but I do believe in what this team can do. I believe in what this team can accomplish.”

In the present, according to ESPN , this Florida State team is the third team since 1978 to be favored by double digits in their first two games and lose both of them.

At the junction, the narrative to incite Florida State fans about their worthiness of being in the College Football Playoff last season is inappropriate, they were undefeated, regardless of whether you believed they should or shouldn’t have been there, an undefeated team will always have merit.

Even the rout administered by Georgia in the Orange Bowl wouldn’t be completely fair. I would say that game gave us a glimpse of the deficiencies we are seeing now with Florida State.

I was bullish on Florida State, I felt defensively the defensive end duo of Marvin Jones Jr. and Patrick Payton would have impacted opposing offenses. Currently, both Jones and Payton have combined for a single tackle for loss and have yet to register a sack.

Georgia Tech and Boston College offensive lines have opposed their wills against the weary Seminoles defensive line unit, a season ago they allowed during the regular season 135.9 rushing yards per game and was the first defensive unit in 20 years to allow zero or fewer yards in consecutive fourth quarters. This season, Florida State has surrendered 226.5 rushing yards per game at 5.1 yards per carry. That certainly won’t get it done.

What won’t get it done either is the play of quarterback D.J. Uiagalelei .

The play from the Boston College game that had me lose hope in Uiagalelei came in at the end of the first half when he missed a wide-open Darion Williamson in the back corner of the end zone. Uiagalelei was in shotgun, there was no pressure from Boston College, and all he had to do was make the routine pitch and catch to get six. Uiagalelei completely missed.

That play to me has epitomized his entire collegiate career, whether it was at Clemson, Oregon State, and now with Florida State. At the critical moments, Uiagalelei simply could not execute.

The last nail so far this season has been the ground attack for Florida State, or the lack of commitment to it in the Boston College game. Taking away the negative plays Uiagalelei had, Florida State ran the ball only eight times for 16 yards. So far this season, the Seminoles are averaging 59.5 yards per game, down nearly 100 yards from a season ago.

Over the years, I have seen Florida State have back-to-back head-scratchers, the classic example was 1989. Florida State opened the season in the Gator Bowl for a neutral site encounter with Southern Miss.

Southern Miss was guided by a junior quarterback by the name of Brett Favre. Favre engineered arguably the biggest win in Southern Miss history completing 21 of 39 passes for 282 yards and a pair of touchdowns. Southern Miss wasn’t able to capitalize on the win as they would go 5-6.

Florida State was left soul-searching after the Southern Miss game, “They are a good football team, make no mistake about that,” then Florida State coach Bobby Bowden said after the game . “They played so darn well. This was like a home game out there. That’s what’s so amazing. That was our crowd out there. Southern Miss did a great job.”

While Florida State still had a hangover, losing to Clemson 34-23 at home the following week, Bowden engineered one of his best coaching jobs winning the final 10 games. It was during that streak that Bowden delivered one of his coaching opuses giving eventual national champion Miami their only loss of the season. Florida State in 1989 would cap their season with a Fiesta Bowl rout of Nebraska 41-17.

Nothing is out of the realm of possibilities for Florida State. Norvell recognized this earlier this week , “I do believe in can do. I believe in what this team can accomplish. I’ve got to get better. I’ve got to prepare them better. And we’ve got to do everything in our power to be able to apply the things that we’re emphasizing throughout the course of the week through the course of the game.”

This is a new era of college football, you don’t have to be perfect* (asterisk in place because the 2023 Florida State Seminoles were perfect but did not make the College Football Playoff) to make it to the playoffs and play for a championship. The margin for error is now zero for the Seminoles and their 10-game season begins next week against Memphis, Norvell’s former club, and they control their own fate if they would like to make the playoffs.