Florida State didn’t have the stomach to eat Mike Norvell’s $60+ million buyout after another losing season in 2025. The administration did, however, recognize that a 7-17 record over the program’s last two seasons was unacceptable, and overhauled the front office.Â
FSU hired John Garrett as deputy athletic director and manager, Taylor Edwards as director of football and player acquisition, and Joe Manion as director of college scouting. Norvell also hired three new position coaches, Blue Adams as defensive backs coach, Kam Martin as running backs coach, and Nick Williams to coach edge rushers.Â
Of those new hires, Nick Williams is beginning to stand out after Florida State’s recent recruiting win.Â
EDGE coach Nick Williams is having a real impact on FSU’s local recruiting efforts
Mike Norvell has never recruited the state of Florida particularly well, and he’s never put much of a emphasis on improving those efforts with his coaching hires. Florida isn’t Louisiana, where every five-star grew up an LSU Tigers fan. There’s real competition, both inside the state and out, and Williams, a Bainbridge, Georgia native from just across the northern border, understands that as well as anyone on the staff.Â
That’s likely why, as FSU flails on the recruiting trail with the No. 56-ranked class in the country and only 10 commits, Williams is winning real recruiting battles of significance, landing Jaxon Holly over Virginia Tech and Auburn on Sunday and holding onto Anthony Cavallaro, FSU’s lone in-state four-star commit in 2027.Â
Williams spent the last two seasons coaching edge rushers on Fran Brown’s staff at Syracuse before returning to the Southeast. Prior to that, Williams spent time at Colorado, Texas A&M, and Georgia, where he played from 2008 to 2010 and worked as a graduate assistant from 2018 to 2020.Â
While that’s not all in or around Florida, Williams is one of the few members of the staff who seems to understand the area. While Holly isn’t an in-state recruit, he’s from Roswell, Georgia, north of Atlanta, and in Williams’ home state. Williams cultivated a relationship that he built when he offered Holly at Syracuse, and converted it into one of FSU’s rare recruiting wins this offseason.Â
Williams is clearly standing out among the other newly-hired coaches on this FSU staff, and even in comparison to the front office hires. Bringing in Garrett, Edwards, and Manion may not pay dividends until the program moves on from Norvell and reinvigorates the donor base with a new head coach. Still, for as difficult as it is to recruit with a lame-duck head coach, it’s hard to imagine their plan was to have a recruiting class ranked outside the top 50 at this point in the offseason.Â
It’s too late for Norvell to correct all his mistakes and pull Florida State out of this hole. There’s almost no way he can win over enough donors to compete financially. So, in hindsight, if he had hired more coaches like Williams, with a better understanding of the area and more vigor for recruiting, the hole may never have gotten this deep.
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