USA Today is pretty high on FSU's chances for a bounce-back season.
The Seminoles, coming off of consecutive losing seasons, made Paul Myerberg's post-spring way-roo-early top 25 at No. 22. Then Myerberg and Erick Smith combined to re-rank all 138 FBS teams after spring practices and FSU landed in at 29th. If you average the two together, the Seminoles fall right in as a fringe top-25 team. And I think that would make FSU fans pretty happy.
Ohio State, Notre Dame, Texas, Georgia and Indiana round out of the top five of USA TODAY Sports’ post-spring college football Re-Rank 1-138. https://t.co/n8PGGKlsbT
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) April 29, 2026
There hasn't been a lot of info coming off of spring. Most of the practices have been closed and Mike Norvell says what he wants to say and sometimes flubs that, like his unnecessarily delayed announcement on Ashton Daniels being named QB1.
Despite all of that, the FSU coaches seem to be genuinely optimistic about what the team could accomplish this season, and it sounds like more than typical coachspeak.
USA Today believes FSU will be a fringe top-25 team in 2026
FSU has some real playmakers on offense to be excited about. Duce Robinson is a 1,000-yard receiver and a threat to pop off a big play on every snap. The running backs, most notably Ousmane Kromah and Texas transfer Tre Wisner, a former 1,000-yard rusher, look like a group with real NFL talent. Defensively, the secondary looks like it could be pretty solid and Mandrell Desir is going to be the anchor on the defensive line. Personally, I'm pretty excited about his twin brother, Darryl, who I believe can take a big jump forward this year.
The rest of the defense is, how shall we say, less than inspiring, which means the Seminoles will probably be in a few shootouts this season. And then there's Daniels, one of the biggest question marks in all of college football. Norvell is banking on him being better than his 5-18 record as a starter and hoping his two-game sample size at Auburn is a sign of things to come.
Either way, there is enough there for someone to say that FSU could be a team that wins 8 or 9 games if everything breaks right. The schedule is not easy, but there are stretches that are manageable and quite a few 50/50 games on there. Are the Seminoles a playoff team? Probably not, but could they finish top-6 in the ACC? Sure.
And given what's happened over the past two years, that would be considered good progress.
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