FSU faces familiar challenge: Can Mike Norvell lead another second-half surge

The bad part about a three-game losing skid is in the title, FSU has lost three straight games.

If there's a silver lining in this, it's that Mike Norvelll has been here before...multiple times actually, and in a couple of those years, FSU was able to bounce back. The Seminoles started 0-4 in 2021 and won five of eight to end the year. In 2022, FSU was 4-0 to start and then lost three straight, all to top-25 ranked teams, before closing the season winning six straight, including the bowl game. 

We've seen cases of seasons that can go off the rails or ones that can be recovered and, truthfully, it's hard to determine what FSU will do. That's the peril of having a roster that's primarily made up of transfers — we don't have a large sample size of the team's personality. 

​Norvell is just hoping this group can focus on the task at hand and not worry about the past disappointments.

""Nobody likes losing. Nobody likes having [things go] against you. Nobody likes people talking bad about you. But at the end of the day, all of that won't matter if you can control what you can control. Go get better and improve the results.""

The head coach brought up the 2022 season, which led to a 13-1 season in 2023 that included an ACC championship.

"I've seen it in 2022. There weren't great expectations. There weren't a lot of people happy with where the program was. Then, going into the year, we beat LSU.and won some games to start the season, and then we lost three straight. But we had a team that came together," Norvell added. "They made the choice to block all that out and control what they could control. They did that and 19 straight games later we were still winning."

​Where are the remaining wins on the schedule?

Well, Stanford certainly feels like a must-win. FSU is favored by over two touchdowns and has every statistical and analytic advantage available. The concerns are that the Cardinal are much better on the farm than they are at home. And they will have the advantage of a 10:30 p.m. East Coast start.

Wake Forest is the Wake Forest we've come to know over the better part of two decades — always feisty and up for a battle. Should FSU beat them? Sure. Can FSU show up half-assed and expect to win? Absolutely not.

But let's assume Stanford, Wake and Virginia Tech are wins. That's six wins, it's bowl eligibility. Now what? How do we feel about Clemson on the road? The Tigers are always tougher in the second half of the season. How about N.C. State on the road? Mike Norvell is 0-3 against N.C. State. And the Gators in the Swamp, in what's likely to be Billy Napier's final game? Feels like a toss up.

If FSU finished with the 8-4 record we predicted to start the season, that's a good bounce back. 7-5 or 6-6 feels like a missed opportunity. Anything less than that and it will be time to fire up the coaching search hot board.