Woah! Looks like Florida State Seminoles HC Mike Norvell’s woes aren’t going away anytime soon. Last season was rough for Norvell and Co., so rough that the program even considered firing him. Unfortunately, that would’ve cost Florida State a hefty $64 million. Perhaps that’s what saved Norvell’s job. So, now that he’s got a second chance to turn the Seminoles’ luck around, patience is wearing thin. That’s where college football analysts come in, giving us the lowdown on what the future holds for him.

Well, Norvell has been serving as the Florida State HC since 2019. However, the 2024 season came off as the final nail to his HC role. The fans’ woes got 100x more intense. After all, in the 2023 season, Norvell’s boys went on a 13-0 winning streak, bagging the ACC Championship. And what about 2024?

The Seminoles became the first preseason top-10 team to start the season 0-3, that too facing unranked opponents. Norvell failed to carry forward the legacy of his predecessors, Bobby Bowden and Jimbo Fisher. In the whole of the 2024 season, the Seminoles could bag only two wins. One against LSU Tigers (45-24) and the other against Ole Miss Rebels (45-34). So, where does Norvell stand in 2025? 

The HC signed an eight-year extension in the offseason worth $10 million per season. So he is going to halt for quite some time until the program can get hold of the fortune to show him the exit door. On the 247Sports podcast, the analysts discussed Norvell’s time ahead. Bud Elliott does not see much chance of the HC flipping the narrative overnight. He said, “Yeah you can’t follow up a 2-10 year by going like 4-8 or 5-7.” 

“I think they’ll have to bounce back because they’ve done a decent job in the transfer portal. But I certainly don’t think they’re really building towards a national title. In the long term, it’s hard to see this being a great, long-lasting relationship,” Elliot added. So, what were the misses by the head coach? According to Gerald V. Dixon, it boils down to competitiveness, and he elaborated, “Then personnel. They brought in the wrong quarterback. Didn’t pay the right quarterback, and their defensive line, that they paid so much money for to apply pressure and stop the run, got run through. So yes, the pressure’s on, not only because of your record, but what the product looks like.”

Do you remember Florida State’s face-off against Notre Dame? Norvell’s QB Brock Glenn and QB Luke Kromenhoek were sacked a combined eight times. This became the worst record in the Seminoles’ history, as they allowed 15 total sacks in two weeks. The Seminoles had the worst scoring offense in FBS at 13.3 points per game.

Looks like Norvell had pinned high hopes on the wrong ones. Thus Dixon suggested, “Leadership comes down to your coach…You have to be able to understand the character of your leaders, and when you give that away and you say well, the highest paid guys are our leaders. Sometimes they’re the worst ones.” Does that mean even the $64 million safety net cannot save him?

A brutal road ahead for Mike Norvell’s Seminoles

Looks like very tough times are ahead of the Seminoles. On The Number One College Football Show, host RJ Young sounded an alarm: “That was a rough fall, and the only reason that I’m entertaining this is because Florida State got a d–n hard schedule.” Poor Seminoles! They got gifted with a pretty tough schedule. In the 2025 season, Florida State will have to face Kalen DeBoer’s Alabama in the opening matchup. 

This would be followed by face-offs against Miami, Clemson, and Florida. Up in line are two tricky road games against NC State and Stanford. But looks like the HC has already started to make some changes to promise Seminoles a better future. For example, he has stepped back from play-calling duties for the first time in his career. That’s when he brought in Gus Malzahn as the new OC and Tony White to look over the defense. 

No matter how wild the 2024 season has been, Mike Norvell is still running high on optimism. Is it because of his wins in the recruitment race? “It’s got talent, it’s got size, it’s got speed. And now we’ve got to go put it together… Put a football team on the field that’s going to represent this program the way that it deserves,” Norvell sounded all confident.

However, while the Seminoles landed 16 transfers and 21 high school recruits, their transfer portal performance raises questions. Instead of a game-changing QB like John Mateer or Carson Beck, they acquired Thomas Castellanos, who was benched at Boston College. Castellanos’ stats (1,366 passing yards, 18 TDs) are decent, but the overall portal class lacks star power. Combined with a good but not elite 2025 recruiting class, FSU’s offseason moves seem more like singles and doubles than home runs. Can 2025 break the curse? Or will it mirror the heartbreak of 2024?