FSU football: Comparing recruiting classes from a year ago
By Kelvin Hunt
Parting Thoughts
I think it’s safe for rival fans to throw away the poor narrative of Mike Norvell not recruiting high school players well.
The Noles are killing it at nearly every position and have almost all of their recruiting needs met aside from a couple of spots, and they have quality targets for most of those remaining. I want to remind FSU football fans what changed between then and now.
FSU showed proof of concept on the field and won 10 games for the first time since 2016. That helped tremendously, along with getting a couple of high-profile guys later in the recruiting cycle like; five-star Hykeem Williams and four-star Blake Nichelson.
However, one thing most fans keep forgetting is where FSU was with their NIL game a year ago.
Rising Spear didn’t officially launch until April 2022, and The Battle’s End was non-existent until around December 2022. FSU missed on several guys early because of that issue.
The hire of Patrick Surtain as defensive backs coach appears to have paid dividends also.
The offensive staff is recruiting at near an elite level, but there’s a couple of spots on the defensive side where FSU needs to get younger to be transparent if they want to be elite on that side.
However, there’s a a chance for the defensive staff to reel in few more blue-chip players. If that happens, this class will be top five nationally.