FSU Football: 3 reasons to have patience with Coach Mike Norvell

Year 0

Before we get into the nitty-gritty here, I want to preface this section by saying that throughout his tenure, up until the Louisiana-Monroe game, I was behind Taggart all the way. In hindsight, it was a baseless faith of hoping he would turn things around.

But with recruits jumping ship and losses that kept getting worse and worse to watch, it was time to part ways. Had Odell Haggins not controlled the freefall, FSU football would have again been without a bowl game.

In Norvell’s defense, I want to revisit the no off-season point because I believe it is the strongest one.

Coach Norvell didn’t even have his whole staff in place when he had to start salvaging this recruiting class. He had a defensive back coach lured away in that time frame and still somehow got a mid-30s recruiting class to sneak into the top 25.

Then he has to show his current players what he can do in a practice setting to get them to buy-in, and that was stopped three days in because of a global pandemic.

He then has to not only get these kids to buy into him, and his staff over zoom, which we all know isn’t the same as real life, but also install his playbook and scheme to relatively unknown commodities.

He has to do this while getting the transfers to join in and get them eligible to play and the situation snowballs and gets out of hand. He didn’t do himself any favors when he misspoke in an interview and that mistake was costly as the buy-in of the veteran players significantly diminished if not evaporated completely, and he had to quickly had to win his team back.

That probably brought the team back to square one, after all of its momentum built during “Tour of Duty,” and the summer spent in quarantine.

The during fall camp, the injured team limped into installing their scheme and another player revolt that lead to DJ Mathews entering the transfer portal immediately, leaving a gap in talent behind Terry and Helton until the former left the team.

With the consistent “1-step forward and 2-steps back” of the whole off-season, it makes sense that much of the regular season ended up following the same path.