Dejected after last season's omission from the College Football Playoff, players and coaches were left spiraling in a myriad of disappointment -- and Florida State hasn't shaken the lingering hangover.
The 60-point Orange Bowl loss to Georgia that's plastered on signs across the weight room was supposed to summon the thirst for vengeance and vindication after Florida State was left out of the playoff, which folks in Tallahassee dub 'the Snub,' -- capital 'S,' yes, it's that serious. There was a rush to flood the NIL coffers, there was of course an at-large sit-out of at least 25 scholarship players of one of college football's most prestigious bowls, there was mass hysteria regarding a Disney conspiracy theory, with multiple ESPN personalities, namely Kirk Herbstreit, under fire as persona non grata. There was, and is, the lawsuit to try and get out of the ACC, which Florida State thought was too slow to condemn the committee's choice to put Alabama in over an undefeated, albeit quarterback-less, Seminoles team.
All bark, no bite. (And put your spears down -- for the record, I thought the Noles should have been a playoff team.)
After Georgia Tech's gut punch in Ireland, paired with Monday night's bow out at home against Boston College, the nausea and restlessness has returned to Tallahassee. But there's nobody else to blame now. What started as a bad dream materialized into a likely fatal blow on the 2024 season. You have to imagine certain members of the ACC's brain trust are snickering that two "inferior" programs handed the Seminoles nationally-televised losses. Meanwhile, Mike Norvell is picking up the pieces of a shattered team with no sense of direction or identity.
This is one of the possible pitfalls of a transfer-laden roster in college football's new era, a harsh reality the Seminoles are experiencing as they tumble out of the national rankings. When portal acquisitions aren't immediately impactful, struggles arise and fissures turn to cracks.
Program culture is at risk of deterioration if the landslide continues. Florida State's offensive personnel hasn't gelled under the leadership of quarterback D.J. Uiagalelei. And the Seminoles sorely miss five NFL Draft picks on the other side of the football, no longer possessing menacing play off the edge or a glimmer of reliability at linebacker.
In total, 52 letter-winners -- including 10 starters -- are back from a team that all but mailed it in after the selection committee's surprising decision last fall. This year's team hasn't earned anything and their preseason ranking at No. 10 was primarily due to the widespread belief Norvell could patch personnel holes with transfers, like he usually does.
Brendan Sonnone, of Noles247, summed it up well Tuesday morning:
"Right now, there's no direction. Pride feels like it's lacking, leaders do need to step up and I don't know who that is, so I don't see an immediate fix in sight.
"FSU is lost. It might very well be bad, too. But at a minimum, it's very, very lost."
A closer look shows Florida State loaded up on high-risk players from other programs from a career production standpoint. Many of its top portal signees would likely have fighting for spots on the two-deep this fall at their previous schools, outside of Uiagalelei and Sione Lolohea.
Norvell, whose contract nearly doubled this offseason after being attached to Alabama's vacancy, is facing a crossroads of sorts after three straight disappointing performances dating back to last season have all but erased the program's previous 19-game winning streak.
"There's going to be plenty of negativity around this program. I understand that," Norvell said after watching his team struggle against first-year coach Bill O'Brien and Boston College. "When you perform the way we just did, it's all part of it. But for a football team, you've got to stay together. And you've got to make sure that you're there for each other.
"We've been knocked down. We know how to get up. But we've got to go do that. And it's one thing to talk about it. It's another thing to put it into action and then to be able to perform in the moment throughout the course of the game."
The embarrassment in Miami at the Orange Bowl, which said plenty about the team's reaction to the events and its underclassmen talent, should have been the look-in-the-mirror moment for the Seminole. Instead, back-to-back losses to less-talented competition calls for deeper internal introspection.