Can Florida State football climb back from historic collapse? What’s next after rock bottom

The first move Florida State made after its worst season in 50 years was to stop the humiliation.

The Seminoles’ 2-10 campaign had mercifully ended moments earlier with a 31-11 loss to Florida. When the Gators planted their flag triumphantly in the Tallahassee turf, FSU head coach Mike Norvell personally took the archrivals’ emblem and threw it to the ground.

Critics cracked that the postgame uproar was the most fight the Seminoles had shown all year. But, eight months later, it also looks like a fitting preview of Norvell’s rebuilding plan after one of the most incomprehensible collapses in college football history: Florida State saw a problem and addressed it with the fire and desperation Norvell stresses daily, then vowed the disgrace would never happen again.

“Nobody ever wants to face disappointment, no one ever wants to get knocked down,” Norvell said. “But I’m built for this journey. This program is built for this journey.”

The journey ahead for both is unmarked. No coach or Power 4 program has suffered a bigger year-over-year tailspin than the Seminoles, which went from 13-1 ACC champions in 2023 to dead last in the league last fall. They were the first preseason top-10 team to win fewer than three games since 1956.

But this isn’t the first time Norvell has had to lead the Seminoles up from rock bottom.

A month into the 2021 season, Norvell was 3-10 overall (0-4 in Year 2) and still stained by an infamous loss to Jacksonville State. Two days after an unsuccessful rally against Louisville, Norvell delivered a fiery 4 1/2-minute rant that served as a recruiting pitch to anyone fed up with the latest “failure” (his word).

It was a turning point for the program. FSU won five of its final eight games that year, and at least 10 players Norvell added in the ensuing offseason — the ones who saw the problems and wanted to be a part of the solution —  became core contributors to a 23-4 run over the next two years.

Look closely enough, and you can see similarities between that roster makeover and the one Florida State just finished. Norvell’s 2022-23 portal classes prioritized production, whether it was in the Power 4 (Michigan State receiver Keon Coleman), Group of 5 (Western Michigan defensive lineman Braden Fiske) or FCS (Albany defensive end Jared Verse). All three starred at FSU and became top-40 NFL Draft picks.

After unsuccessfully overvaluing potential with big-name, blue-chip backups in the 2024 cycle, Florida State swung back toward proven performance this offseason. A portal class ranked sixth nationally by 247Sports totals at least 319 starts; 17 of the 23 transfers enter with at least five in their careers.

Tommy Castellanos was the only player in Boston College history to record more than 2,000 passing yards and 1,000 rushing yards in the same season, inviting comparisons to Norvell’s last playmaking star quarterback, Jordan Travis. Squirrel White left Tennessee with the seventh most catches in Volunteers history. Luke Petitbon was one of the ACC’s top centers at Wake Forest, and Jeremiah Wilson’s four interceptions last year at Houston were tied for third in the Big 12. Castellanos, Wilson and former USC receiver Duce Robinson all rank among The Athletic’s 90 most impactful transfers this cycle. 

“I wanted to have an emphasis on guys that have done it,” Norvell said. “That doesn’t mean that everything went great for them. I wanted to see their response.”

The same was true with his existing roster. There were, Norvell said, “tough conversations” and “tough decisions” about who showed enough resolve to deserve a spot in the rebuilding process. The exodus, for one reason or another, included Norvell’s top signee in 2023 (receiver Hykeem Williams) and 2021 (receiver Destyn Hill), the 2022 ACC defensive rookie of the year (end Patrick Payton) and the highest-rated quarterback Norvell has signed at FSU (Luke Kromenhoek). Of the 60 Seminoles who participated against Memphis — the sky-is-falling mid-September loss to Norvell’s former team — 36 are gone. More starters from that game transferred out (seven) than remain (five).

The roster churn led Norvell to a group of players that “said yes to the expectation.” It’s almost the exact same phrase Norvell used to describe those who fought through his early struggles to turn the program around last time. Players at last month’s ACC media days used another word: desperate.

“Desperate to win, desperate to eat, just desperate to succeed,” defensive back Earl Little Jr. said.

Or, in the case of Castellanos, desperate to make Florida State feared again. He made ripples this offseason when he said he didn’t see Week 1 opponent Alabama stopping him. Though the bravado was not always well-received by a quarterback who was 11-9 as the starter at Boston College and left before the end of last season, he said the support was universal from former players itching for a return to national relevance.

“It’s my job to reinstall some good times, some happiness, some laughs, some joy that comes with winning,” Castellanos said. “We want everybody to be able to get back to the old Florida State.”

If this Florida State does get back to looking like the old Florida State, it will be with a new-look coaching staff. Before the season was over, Norvell fired three of his original hires: offensive coordinator Alex Atkins, defensive coordinator Adam Fuller and receivers coach Ron Dugans. In December, Seminoles Hall of Famer Odell Haggins moved from defensive line coach to a broader assistant role, ending a 31-year tenure that was the longest of any position coach at one school in the country. Co-defensive coordinator Randy Shannon was out, too.

Their replacements included the highest-paid assistant in Nebraska history, defensive coordinator Tony White, and former Auburn/UCF head coach Gus Malzahn as offensive coordinator. Hiring Malzahn did more than add the experience and knowledge of a sitting Power 4 head coach who came 13 seconds away from leading Auburn past the Seminoles for the 2013 national championship. Because Norvell spent two years under Malzahn on Tulsa’s offense staff, he can trust his mentor to run the system with a quarterback (Castellanos) whom Malzahn originally signed at UCF. Norvell traded his biggest strength — calling plays — to have more time for personal conversations and one-on-one meetings than ever. Perhaps deeper relationships can repair or prevent any intangible weaknesses that festered last fall.

Whether any of these changes work is unknown. No Power 4 program has ever had its win total drop so much from one season to the next, and the recent results of somewhat similar roller-coaster rebuilds are mixed. Of the 11 other preseason top-10 teams to finish with fewer than five wins in the past 50 seasons (excluding 2020), four rebounded to finish ranked the next season.

The best-case comparison is what Brian Kelly did at Notre Dame after yo-yoing from 10-3 in 2015 to 4-8 the next year. With a revamped staff led by three new coordinators, the Fighting Irish bounced back to go 10-3 in 2017. Kelly won 54 of his final 63 games and made the Playoff twice before leaving for LSU after the 2021 regular season.

A worst-case scenario mirrors what happened at Florida under Will Muschamp after a crumble from an 11-1 regular season in 2012 to 4-8 with a home loss to then-FCS team Georgia Southern. Running back Matt Jones said the shame lingered all the way until the next fall.

When 2014 began, Jones said the Gators put 4-8 behind them, and the chemistry issues and finger-pointing subsided. But even an overhauled offense and top-10 recruiting class with three future Super Bowl champions couldn’t turn things around; Muschamp was fired after a 5-4 start.

“We put up a fight (on the field), and that’s just what happened,” said Jones, the Gators’ leading rusher in 2014. “We came up short.”

Michigan State landed somewhere in the middle after falling from the 2015 CFP to 3-9. Mark Dantonio went 10-3, 7-6 and 7-6, then stepped away from a stagnating program in February 2020.

Norvell has owned last year’s failures, beyond uprooting the Gators’ flag and immediately apologizing when the 2-10 season was finally over. In December, he voluntarily cut this season’s pay by $4.5 million “while recognizing that the results and expectations need to be upheld to the highest level.” The restructured contract also gives him the chance to earn $750,000 back with every nine-win season starting in 2026.

Norvell’s buyout would be north of $50 million after this season, cooling hot-seat speculation around a marquee brand projected to finish seventh in the 17-team ACC. Instead, it puts him and the Seminoles in a rare spot.

The first four years of Norvell’s tenure were defined by “The CLIMB,” the motivational catchphrase that became the title of the program’s YouTube series. The process worked all the way to the precipice of the four-team CFP. Now, after a historic free fall, is it possible for Norvell and the Seminoles to climb back?

“When you’re climbing a mountain, there might be some times where you slip and where you stumble,” Norvell said. “But the most important step along the journey is the next one.”

(Photo: Grant Halverson / Getty Images)