Column: Get ready for an exhausting, long FSU football offseason

Saturday’s Florida State season finale was a fitting ending for a second consecutive disaster of a season for Mike Norvell.

After talk about how the Seminoles’ metrics were far better than the team’s record, and after Norvell got a true vote of confidence from the FSU administration six days prior, the Seminoles delivered a dead-duck performance against a dreadful Florida team being led by an interim coach to miss a bowl for the second straight season.

With the news that Norvell will be back in 2026 already announced, that game sends us into an offseason that is going to feel as listless as quite possibly any in Florida State football’s modern history.

“Right now, just coming out of the game, we’ve got to be better and we’ve got to be drastically better from what we’ve shown,” Norvell said after Saturday’s 40-21 loss when asked about what changes will come to the program this offseason. “There’s a time and place for all that, and we’ll get to that here soon.”

In some ways, it sounds similar to what Norvell said a season ago when the Seminoles wrapped up a 2-10 campaign.

And yet, there’s one thing he promised after last year’s season-ending loss to Florida which sure didn’t come to fruition this year.

“I told the team there in the locker room, this is getting fixed. It’s going to be an immediate, fast fix,” Norvell said last November. “We are going to make sure that every person a part of this program is all in in that process for what’s necessary to go be better in how we respond, in how we continue to fight, develop, to execute, to go out there and perform to win the game and putting everything that we have to be the best we can be.”

Welp. Safe to say that aged poorly after this season’s 3-0 start. The Seminoles finished without a road win for the second straight year and seemed to get less competitive in road games as the season progressed.

But it’s hard to see this offseason’s transformations being effective if the sweeping staff and roster changes from last offseason didn’t have the desired effect.

Last year, Norvell could sell all the ways the program is changing and being just one year removed from a 13-0 season to land coordinators like Gus Malzahn and Tony White, transfers like Duce Robinson, Jerry Wilson and Gavin Sawchuk and freshmen like Ousmane Kromah and Kevin Wynn.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll see if Norvell has to again make any coordinator or assistant coach changes and how many of the players that he wants to retain he’ll be able to keep.

But when it comes to whatever new additions he makes this offseason to his staff and roster, it’s certainly going to be a tougher sell given his pending hot-seat status with a 7-17 record over the last two seasons.

This probably doesn’t apply to a new football general manager hire Florida State could make, as it’s quite possible, maybe even likely, a new person in that role would report to FSU AD Michael Alford and not have his future in Tallahassee tied to Norvell.

But as for everyone else, it seems even less likely Norvell is going to be able to find the right pieces to once more find his former success, which feels like it happened a decade ago at this point due to all the trauma of the last two seasons.

And yet, because coaches only know one coach-speak way, it’s going to be an offseason of hearing about how these new faces are going to be what turns the program around.

I’m not sure anyone who follows FSU football is going to believe a single one of those words this offseason.

And yet, as long as this offseason is about to feel, I’m not sure anyone in the fanbase is in any rush for it to end to see what that 2026 team looks like on the field.