FSU football: Observations from Thursday’s practice with Mike Norvell

FSU football has a few spring practices under their belts this week, with their first practice with pads taking place Friday.

Mike Norvell seemed pleased with practice overall, aside from calling out the wide receivers for dropping too many passes.

If you’ll recall, that position was the No. 1 group I was concerned about going into spring practice.

There’s not a lot of depth, and a lot of young guys are trying to find their way. The good news is, Norvell seemed happy with how the quarterbacks were throwing the ball.

One of the biggest question marks about this program is the defense. Will Adam Fuller be able to find the right combinations as they move to more of a Nickel defense?

Fuller is the guy most FSU football fans have their eye on, and he feels he has seen some growth as a collective group. It sounds like he’s high on Amari Gainer, and spoke about the challenges Travis Jay faced last year playing multiple positions with injuries.

Norvell, Fuller, Jarvis Brownlee, and Emmett Rice spoke with the media:

Parting Thoughts

These coaches will give you coach speak, but at the same time will provide you some candid nuggets as well. I think we saw that with Adam Fuller talking about Robert Cooper’s play, and Norvell saying the wide receivers needed to step their game up.

Adam Fuller also gave more insight into just how many obstacles they had to deal with personnel-wise along with not having a spring practice. Several players played multiple positions, while not getting the reps needed at practice because of injury or because they were playing multiple positions.

I’m still in the Adam Fuller needs to prove himself this year, but I believe not having spring practice is one of the main reasons the defense was so terrible in 2020.

I’m looking forward to seeing how these guys respond to wearing pads at practice for the first time Friday.