Florida State football’s disastrous 0-3 start is a symptom of bigger problems

To say that this has been a disaster of an opening stretch to the season for the Florida State Seminoles would be an understatement. The Seminoles have gone from a top-10 team in the preseason polls to 0-3 against the likes of Georgia Tech, Boston College and now Memphis, with two of those games being at home. The seat for head coach Mike Norvell (who was given a massive extension this offseason after rumors about him taking the Alabama job started swirling) is increasingly getting hotter, and the schedule doesn’t get easier.

The biggest question here is: how did it all go wrong for the Noles?

Let’s start with the talent acquisition portion of things. The Seminoles under Mike Norvell have normally been pretty good with using the transfer portal. Shoot, most of their team that went undefeated last year was built through the portal. QB Jordan Travis was at Louisville, RB Trey Benson came from Oregon, WR Keon Coleman came from Michigan State, WR Johnny Wilson was at Arizona State. On the defensive side, DE Jared Verse came from Albany and DT Braden Fiske came from Western Michigan. These impact players all came through the portal in search of better opportunities, which is the beauty of the transfer portal. You find gems through that alley that can elevate the ceiling of a team when the floor is built through high school recruiting.

However, the transfer portal is a fickle beauty. For every gem you find, you can also strike out on critical players at critical positions, which is where the Seminoles find themselves offensively. The biggest transfer was QB DJ Uiagalelei from Oregon State. This is Uiagalelei’s third stop, with multiple coordinators and offenses trying to solve the question of “how is a kid this physically talented this bad?” Through three games, the Seminoles’ offense hasn’t figured it out, either.

Uiagalelei is 117th in Passing Success Rate (per gameonpaper) and hasn’t been a threat on the ground in the same way Travis was last year. While Travis was better at creating when the pocket collapsed and being explosive on the ground, Uiagalelei is more of a lumbering runner who can’t create under pressure. Because Uiagalelei is essentially a statue who isn’t confident when throwing in standard dropback situations, the offense is limited to rollouts and half field reads. When he is asked to throw in those standard situations, the offensive line falls apart and it looks like this:

Not pretty at all.

The offensive line is a much bigger issue than the QB or any of the other portal additions. After being so good last year, and three of the five starters coming back, this experienced offensive line shouldn’t be as porous as it is. But again, that comes down to development. Some of these guys are redshirt seniors who have played a lot of football, but if they aren’t good now, then the coaching has to take some blame. When Uiagalelei was at his best at Oregon State, they had a mean and physical offensive line that could run the ball really well, and Uiagalelei didn’t have to shoulder the load offensively. That’s not the case at FSU, and it’s because the line play has been so poor. The receiver talent after Coleman and Wilson left has also been hit or miss, with nobody consistently creating separation. From the identification of the talent to the development, it’s all gone bad at Florida State.

This is where high school recruiting and development becomes so, so important. It’s really hard to win consistently through exclusively getting transfers in and out of the program. Transfers are more like one to two-year fixes, while you might get a high school recruit for at least three years. Florida State is in an odd period where the high school recruiting is fine; the Seminoles haven’t finished outside the top 25 of 247 Sports recruiting in Norvell’s entire tenure. However, if the recruits coming in are good, but the product is still bad, then development isn’t happening. It’s what separates teams like Florida State from teams like Texas or Ohio State. Both recruit at a very high level and both use the transfer portal really well, like FSU. The problem is that Ohio State and Texas are both much better at developing the high school talent they have, and not needing to rely on transfers in critical spots like the offensive and defensive line.

That is where the Seminoles need to improve, and I’m not sure if Norvell will get the time to improve them.