Labor Day weekend marks the official start of college football season. The leaves are changing, the temperatures are dropping, and we get our first glimpse of the contenders for one of the 12 playoff spots. Early this season, some teams have shown surprising potential, like USC. Others have made a bold statement, like Notre Dame and Miami. Some have started slowly but are still in contention, like reigning champion Michigan. And then there’s FSU.

After Florida State unjustly (yes) missed out on the playoffs last year, the offseason has not only seen the loss of all of its stars to graduation and the draft, but also a lot of complaining and threats, much to everyone’s dismay. The school’s enemies and haters are probably enjoying watching the Seminoles follow up on that bluff by blowing their first two games of the new season. FSU hasn’t just blown it, they’ve looked terrible the entire time. DJ Uiagalelei has somehow gotten worse after transferring from Oregon State, the receivers are dropping passes, the defense is getting trashed by ACC powerhouses Georgia Tech and Boston College, and the play calling on both sides of the ball has been abysmal.

On Monday, in Boston College’s 28-13 rout of the Seminoles, BC quarterback Thomas Castellanos looked like the reincarnation of Louisville-era Lamar Jackson. Bill O’Brien’s Eagles controlled the ball for 14 of the first quarter’s 15-minute run time and finished the game with 263 total rushing yards. Meanwhile, Uiagalelei completed 21 of 42 passes for 272 yards, including FSU’s lone touchdown, a 29-yard pass to Kentron Poitier that was the team’s only sign of life. But even those subpar numbers can’t quite capture how abysmal Uiagalelei looked, missing wide-open receivers and overdoing deep passing after an opening game in which every pass was behind the line of scrimmage. It’s a sign that this coaching staff has no idea what to do.

“I think it’s sick how this season started,” FSU coach Mike Norvell said afterward. “I didn’t prepare the team to respond tonight.”

I will say. Ardent Defector readers may recall that your boy here is not only an FSU alumnus and fan, but also a noted Mike Norvell skeptic, completely unmoved by the last two years of apparent success, including an undefeated season in 2023. Many of the reasons I remain a disbeliever have become clear over the past week. Mike Norvell is not an inventive playcaller, nor do his teams have a good sense of the rhythm of a game. Mike Norvell teams are sloppy, even when they are doing well. The case against Florida State’s undefeated 2023 season, while hypocritical and mostly beside the point, was accurate in its observation that FSU never really dominated their competition and often relied too heavily on the heroics of Jordan Travis. While many fans were quick to dismiss Georgia’s complete dominance over them in the Sugar Bowl, it did highlight how underdeveloped Norvell’s roster was outside of the stars. But most importantly in the context of college football, Mike Norvell is an average recruiter. He can’t keep up with the top programs FSU is supposed to be working with and struggles to get five-star recruits or even make the top 10 of any recruiting class.

Norvell is trying to make up for this through the transfer portal. Granted, he used that tool exceptionally well at Florida State. But the portal is most effective as a way to fine-tune a team, not build one. Filling holes in the roster, bolstering depth or landing a potential star or two in the portal is one thing; trying to salvage yourself from mediocre recruiting classes by hoping a few transfers can fix it all is another. Plus, as evidenced by what we see on the field, Norvell and his coaches aren’t exactly doing a great job developing any of these players, regardless of whether he drafted them out of high school or another college program.

While I enjoy the feeling of intellectual superiority, I don’t feel good about the fact that I’m starting to have doubts about Norvell, especially since FSU just restructured his contract to give him Nick Saban-esque money through 2031, all because he played my school like a fiddle and made everyone believe he was a serious contender to replace Saban at Bama, which would only have happened if everyone at Bama was as dumb as Paul Finebaum makes them look. And so we’re stuck with Norvell at an impossibly high number while we try to hustle our way out of the ACC and into some sort of private equity money. Luckily, we’re only two games into the college football season. We’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg of how bad it could get.