FSU football: 5 takeaways from Mike Norvell’s second year in Tallahassee

Mike Norvell Can Recruit

Recruiting is the area most people want to criticize when hired, but I think Norvell has proven folks wrong thus far. They have the 14th ranked recruiting class nationally and addressed the quarterback, offensive line, and signed two top 100 players in the secondary.

I understand some people will say they failed to close on a few prospects. I know the failure to sign one wide receiver in the class won’t fly, but I expect Norvell will hold folks accountable there. If not, that’s a red flag for me.

I think folks forget the staff still had to recruit for months without the ability to see recruits under normal circumstances.

However, they got creative in their approach and had momentum going into the season.

It was a magical job to hold on to the majority of the commits they had even though they had the worst start to the season possible. I won’t go into the Early Signing Day shenanigans, but I think Norvell handled that about as well as you could.

The late-night signing of legacy Julian Armella and the addition of Kayden Lyles from the transfer portal the next day helped soften that blow a bit.

This third year will tell us a lot about the staff. The No. 1 player nationally isn’t committed, and we’ll see what type of work they can do on the trails.