FSU football: How good are Noles recruiting Florida and Georgia?

FSU football head coach Mike Norvell spent the early part of his tenure in Tallahassee with little ties to Florida and the surrounding area.

He knew this and attempted to establish ties with local coaches with meet and greets soon after taking the job, but the pandemic shut everything down in early March 2020.

The pandemic forced Mike Norvell and the staff to go over a year without recruiting face-to-face, which limited evaluations and the ability to build relationships with players and high school coaches.

However, as recruiting opened back up when the pandemic seemed to give way, we’ve seen Mike Norvell and the staff concentrate more and more on Florida and Georgia. These two states were the lifeblood of much of Florida State’s success in its heyday.

I’ve been tracking how many players they were offering in these two states over the past few years, and they gradually made more in-roads with each recruiting class.

Fast forward to the 2024 recruiting class, and they’re finally operating optimally.

They have 22 commits, with 17 hailing from Florida or Georgia. They aren’t getting just any recruits but a lot of top guys. Check it were these recruits rank in those respective states:

• KJ Bolden-No. 2 player in Georgia
• Landen Thomas-No. 6 player in Georgia
• Kameron Davis-No. 8 player in Georgia
• Luke Kromenhoek-No. 15 player in Georgia
• BJ Gibson-No. 44 player in Georgia
• CJ Heard-No. 51 player in Georgia
• Charles Lester-No. 4 player in Florida
• Jonathan Daniels-No. 12 player in Florida
• Micahi Danzy-No. 28 player in Florida
• Lawayne McCoy-No. 31 player in Florida
• Ricky Knight III-No. 55 player in Florida
• Camdon Frier-No. 57 player in Florida

That’s 12 of 17 players ranked in the top 60 in those two states. One of the five not included is a kicker, the No. 5 kicker nationally. One thing that needs to continue to improve is getting higher-ranked in-state players to stay in Florida and choose FSU.

However, that’s more of a state of Florida problem than FSU problem, although FSU can do better there. The good news? They are in the mix for the No. 1(long shot, but still), No. 5, No. 15, No. 17, No. 20, No. 25, and the No. 27 player in the Sunshine State. If they hit on a few of those, and I expect them to, that will paint an even more different picture than now.