{"id":308553,"date":"2026-06-15T23:46:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T23:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/308553\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T23:46:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T23:46:13","slug":"an-underrated-mike-norvell-hire-is-the-only-fsu-change-paying-dividends-on-the-recruiting-trail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/308553\/","title":{"rendered":"An underrated Mike Norvell hire is the only FSU change paying dividends on the recruiting trail"},"content":{"rendered":"

Florida State didn\u2019t have the stomach to eat Mike Norvell\u2019s $60+ million buyout after another losing season in 2025. The administration did, however, recognize that a 7-17 record over the program\u2019s last two seasons was unacceptable, and overhauled the front office.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

FSU hired John Garrett as deputy athletic director and manager, Taylor Edwards as director of football and player acquisition, and Joe Manion as director of college scouting. Norvell also hired three new position coaches, Blue Adams as defensive backs coach, Kam Martin as running backs coach, and Nick Williams to coach edge rushers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of those new hires, Nick Williams is beginning to stand out after Florida State\u2019s recent recruiting win.\u00a0<\/p>\n

EDGE coach Nick Williams is having a real impact on FSU\u2019s local recruiting efforts<\/p>\n

Mike Norvell has never recruited the state of Florida particularly well, and he\u2019s never put much of a emphasis on improving those efforts with his coaching hires. Florida isn\u2019t Louisiana, where every five-star grew up an LSU Tigers fan. There\u2019s real competition, both inside the state and out, and Williams, a Bainbridge, Georgia native from just across the northern border, understands that as well as anyone on the staff.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s likely why, as FSU flails on the recruiting trail with the No. 56-ranked class in the country and only 10 commits, Williams is winning real recruiting battles of significance, landing Jaxon Holly over Virginia Tech and Auburn<\/a> on Sunday and holding onto Anthony Cavallaro, FSU\u2019s lone in-state four-star commit in 2027.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Williams spent the last two seasons coaching edge rushers on Fran Brown\u2019s staff at Syracuse before returning to the Southeast. Prior to that, Williams spent time at Colorado, Texas A&M, and Georgia, where he played from 2008 to 2010 and worked as a graduate assistant from 2018 to 2020.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While that\u2019s not all in or around Florida, Williams is one of the few members of the staff who seems to understand the area. While Holly isn\u2019t an in-state recruit, he\u2019s from Roswell, Georgia, north of Atlanta, and in Williams\u2019 home state. Williams cultivated a relationship that he built when he offered Holly at Syracuse, and converted it into one of FSU\u2019s rare recruiting wins this offseason.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Williams is clearly standing out among the other newly-hired coaches on this FSU staff, and even in comparison to the front office hires. Bringing in Garrett, Edwards, and Manion may not pay dividends until the program moves on from Norvell and reinvigorates the donor base with a new head coach. Still, for as difficult as it is to recruit with a lame-duck head coach, it\u2019s hard to imagine their plan was to have a recruiting class ranked outside the top 50 at this point in the offseason.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too late for Norvell to correct all his mistakes and pull Florida State out of this hole. There\u2019s almost no way he can win over enough donors to compete financially. So, in hindsight, if he had hired more coaches like Williams, with a better understanding of the area and more vigor for recruiting, the hole may never have gotten this deep. <\/p>\n

\"\"Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida State didn\u2019t have the stomach to eat Mike Norvell\u2019s $60+ million buyout after another losing season in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-308553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}