What has been well known was made official today: Ashton Daniels will be the starting quarterback for FSU this fall in a season where Mike Norvell has to win up to some measure to keep his job and get at least a temporary reprieve from the Seminoles fanbase.
Daniels, who beat out redshirt freshman Kevin Sperry for the job, will be the latest in a long line of transfers to start at quarterback for the Seminoles. In the 72 games that Norvell has coached at FSU, 58 have had a transfer starting at quarterback. That includes Jordan Travis, who transferred to FSU from Louisville in 2019. However, for argument's sake, Travis is an outlier here because he spent five years at FSU and grew within the program.
Full story on Ashton Daniels officially being named QB1 https://t.co/dFo07s7ltC
— Andrea Adelson (@aadelsonESPN) April 21, 2026
Mike Norvell puts all his eggs in the Ashton Daniels basket
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, but here we are with Norvell trying to fix another veteran quarterback that's been broken. DJ Uiagalelei wasn't really broken, per se, but he had been trending down since his early days at Clemson and by the time FSU got him, he wasn't the same player that was once considered a five-star prospect.
Whether bringing in Tommy Castellanos was a Norvell decision or a Gus Malzahn decision, I'll let you all decide, but he had clearly fallen out of favor at Boston College. Castellanos talked a good game, but couldn't get the job done on the field down the stretch when a bowl game for FSU was in the balance.Â
Still, both of those players came into Tallahassee with much better resumes than Daniels. Uiagalelei had a 30-10 record as a starter when he arrived at FSU and Castellanos had a .500 record as a starter, a 48-28 TD/INT ratio and even rushed for over 1,100 yards in a season.
Daniels is 5-18 as a starter. You didn't misread that. He's 5-18 in games that he started at quarterback. Do quarterbacks get too much credit for wins and too much blame for losses? Sure. But 5-18 is 5-18. And Mike Norvell, who is 7-17 in his past 24 games at FSU, is banking on someone with an even worse winning percentage in a similar number of games to save his job and revive FSU football.
Even the most optimistic FSU fan has to admit that this is a little crazy, but it might just be crazy enough to work.Â
Add us as a preferred source on Google