FSU football offensive lineman Lucas Simmons became the third offensive lineman to announce intentions to enter the transfer portal when it opens on January 2nd.
The news came on Monday evening and seemed to catch some FSU fans by surprise. It shouldn’t have been a surprise since Simmons was in his third year at FSU and couldn’t crack the starting rotation. He couldn’t get snaps when FSU had an injury on the offensive line during the season.
He joins Mario Nash Jr. (committed to Atkins and signed after he got fired) and Manasse Itete as signees of former FSU offensive line coach/offensive coordinator Alex Atkins.
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Atkins didn’t develop a single high school player that he signed into a starter, and didn’t have a single offensive lineman drafted by an NFL team. Several former Alex Atkins players, some of them composite blue-chip signees, transferred from FSU and never made an impact anywhere.
The only one to get significant playing time was FSU legacy Julian Armella at UCLA this past year. Mario Nash wasn’t at FSU long enough to realistically develop into a player. Itete was in his second year and FSU and couldn’t snuff the field at all. Simmons was in his third year, though he had a health issue in year one that could have been detrimental to his development. However, the lack of player development is a common theme with guys that Alex Atkins signed.
FSU offensive line coach Herb Hand signed two high school guys that he recruited in the 2025 class, and two more from the spring transfer portal window. It’ll be interesting to see if any of those guys factor into the mix for 2026. It’s usually difficult for most offensive linemen to get significant snaps in year one, but they should start factoring into garbage time at least near the end of year two.
Hand has a much better track record of player development than Atkins, and his transfer portal evals last year netted the best FSU offensive line in years. FSU was going to take some offensive linemen in the transfer portal regardless, so losing these three creates room for guys who’ll actually contribute.