Florida State had quite a few of its best players from last year’s roster enter the transfer portal in the offseason, but none scared the fanbase like the Desir twins, Mandrell and Darryll. Ultimately, they returned to the Seminoles, presumably cashing in with a healthy payday to do so, and defensive line coach Terrance Knighton is expecting even more from the d-line duo.
The 2025 three-star recruits out of Miami burst onto the scene as true freshmen, finishing No. 1 and No. 2 on the team in quarterback pressures. Mandrell finished with 6.5 sacks, a team-high mark that led to him being named a freshman All-American.
According to Knighton, who spoke on Sunday after Florida State’s fall camp practice, that production came purely off “raw talent, effort, and physicality.”
“Mandrell, he was making a lot of plays and still didn’t know what the hell he was doing,” Knighton told reporters. “Now that he understands the scheme, you understand where guys fit, it’s allowing him to play faster.” Of both twins, Knighton continued, “Now that those two guys understand the playbook and understand the defense and can play fast and don’t have to think, good luck to whoever has to line up in front of them.”
"Good luck to whoever have to line up in front of 'em"
— Warchant.com (@Warchant) August 2, 2026
Roll call of the standouts on the FSU defensive line for Terrance Knighton pic.twitter.com/vEQoRuYUWD
Mandrell and Darryll Desir must make the improvements Knighton is seeing at fall camp
Heading into Year 2, Mandrell Desir now checks in at 6-foot-4, 270 pounds, and Darryll weighs 259 at 6-foot-5. Both are maximizing their physical frame, which gives them a great build to be versatile defensive linemen in Tony White’s 3-3-5 scheme. The system requires them to be effective rushing off the edge and still have the strength to slide inside and take on double teams in the run game.
Both are built to do just that, but that was true last year. Still, there were glaring issues for Mandrell as a run defender, abandoning his gap in an attempt to penetrate the backfield, or getting dumped on his backside because of poor initial leverage. For Darryll, his problems lie in his finishing, posting a better pass-rush win rate and one more pressure than his brother, but ending the year without a single sack.
So, the question becomes: if they’re physically maxed out and didn’t have the highest physical ceiling to begin with as three-star recruits, where is the Year 2 growth going to come from? And that growth has to come to justify the presumably lofty price FSU had to pay to get them to come back after entering the portal. Here, Knighton is calling it out. It’s on the mental side of their game.
The mental side isn’t often a consideration for defensive linemen. In some ways, it can be the simplest position on the field. Still, there are nuances to the position that no true freshman is going to have mastered right away, whether that’s the scheme, understanding gaps and leverage, recognizing blocking schemes, or technical things like pad level, hand usage, and pass-rush plan.
Mandrell Desir has garnered rave reviews out of FSU’s fall camp, and it sounds like Darryll is coming along as well. That’s a great sign for the Seminole defense in 2026 because the program didn’t spend on its roster like a top-tier contender this offseason. Therefore, the players it did pay up for need to deliver on those deals and then some for FSU to get back to a bowl game, and maybe even pull a few big upsets to get back on track as a program.
Add us as a preferred source on Google