On a four-game losing streak and winless in the ACC through October, Florida State will be looking to course correct this Saturday night vs. Wake Forest.
Head coach Mike Norvell, who is fully aware of the
vibes around the program during yet another slump, is remaining consistent in his messaging to his team.
With FSU having lost all of its games during its skid by one score, Norvell’s emphasizing that fixing the little things could be the difference in the final five games of the season.
“You go back and you reflect in all situations,” he said during his weekly press conference with local media. “There are different things schematically that we can do, making sure that we’re putting our players in the best situation offensively, defensively, special teams.”
“We’ve talked throughout the previous weeks of the importance of owning the ball, creating takeaways, being able to do things that hurt us through that middle stretch. Obviously we were able to do a better job of owning the ball there in our last game. Unfortunately there were some other areas that showed up that kept us from putting points on the board like we’ve been accustomed to. We had a lapse with just too many penalties, some unforced errors in this previous game. For us this week, and my challenge to coaches, players and everybody involved, we’ve got to go out there and we’ve got to do our job.”
“In all reality, I don’t need our players to go do anything exceptional. I just need them to come out and to be able to put forth their best effort, and I do believe exceptional things can happen.”
Speaking on Wake Forest, he offered his compliments to a team he says “plays extremely hard,” with a defense “confident in what they do.”
“They’ve got talented players,” he said. “They’ve got guys that you look at their [defensive] front, they’re going to show you three down, four down, they’re going to be aggressive in their movements, and it’s going to be a team that they’re going to play sideline to sideline. They play fast. Like I said, they’re a high-energy group and they can present some different schematic challenges with talented players. Offensively they’ve kind of gone through some of the ups and downs throughout the course of the year. I know that right now they’ve dealt with some quarterback injuries that have showed up, but I think both the quarterbacks have shown the ability to play at a high level…this is a team that can compete with anybody in our league, and we’re going to have to play our best game as we go into this week.”
Norvell’s full availability can be seen below, as well as a transcript of his remarks.
Mike Norvell Wake Forest week press conference: October 27, 2025
MIKE NORVELL: Good morning, everybody. Good to get back into game week. I thought coming off the bye, had some good competitive practices. As we talked last Wednesday, it was good to get on the road, get out recruiting there this past weekend for the coaches to get within the state and obviously out to see a lot of top targets. Coming off this weekend, got back yesterday, was able to get out, get back on the practice field. Obviously Wake playing this Saturday gave us another game to evaluate, and obviously they’re coming off a big win in a very tight contest against a good SMU team. As we go into this week, it’s about our football team continuing to come together, continuing to rise up and obviously to go put our best game out there on the field come Saturday night. I would like to recognize Seminole Heritage game. This is a great game for us, and just to celebrate the partnership with the Seminole tribe of Florida and what that relationship means to us and this university and to be able to bring awareness to that through this game and then also with this week being homecoming, it’s a great opportunity for all Seminoles, past, present, to be able to celebrate the great things of all things with this university and having people back on campus. Excited for the night kick and obviously the opportunity ahead for this football team.
Q. With all the games being one-score games, they’ve all been close. During the bye week do you take time to look at things you could be doing differently, or is it more just trying to do better what you do already? MIKE NORVELL: No, you go back and you reflect in all situations. There are different things schematically that we can do, making sure that we’re putting our players in the best situation offensively, defensively, special teams. When you come up short in four games that are one-score games, there’s a lot to be able to digest. You try to do that throughout the course of the season after every match-up. But obviously we need to — it’s all about the result. When you find yourself in a negative stretch where you haven’t been able to overcome that, you go and you look at it collectively big picture and then you try to break it down into each phase positionally, personnel-wise, and there’s different dynamics of things that have showed up that have cost us. We’ve talked throughout the previous weeks of the importance of owning the ball, creating takeaways, being able to do things that hurt us through that middle stretch. Obviously we were able to do a better job of owning the ball there in our last game. Unfortunately there were some other areas that showed up that kept us from putting points on the board like we’ve been accustomed to. We had a lapse with just too many penalties, some unforced errors in this previous game. For us this week, and my challenge to coaches, players and everybody involved, we’ve got to go out there and we’ve got to do our job. Coaches have to do a great job of putting together a wonderful plan against a well-coached football team, one that has ability and is playing with a lot of confidence, and we’ve got to put our players in the best position to go make plays. Then our players got to trust and believe in the technique, the fundamentals, and obviously their skill set of what they’re going to bring to this game. In all reality, I don’t need our players to go do anything exceptional. I just need them to come out and to be able to put forth their best effort, and I do believe exceptional things can happen. That’s where it’s just the simplistic focus of doing our job, everybody being part of the program, and go out there and have fun playing and coaching this game.
Q. With Tommy, we see he’s listed on the depth chart as a starter. How is he health-wise? Obviously he had a bye week to heal up. Do you expect any challenges with him this week? MIKE NORVELL: We’ll see how everything plays out this week and just big picture approach with guys that have dealt with injuries, we will have the availability report here towards the end of the week, but coming off the bye, Tommy probably would not have been able to play if we had to play last week, but saw some real progress towards the end of the week off, and we’re trying to be real careful with him just as we went about it. It was good to see the guys practice. He was able to get some work towards the end of the week, and excited about what’s ahead for this week, but we’ll have to take it day by day as this week unfolds.
Q. One more thing on injuries. Jayvan Boggs wasn’t listed on the depth chart. I know he was out, came back. Was that something that — MIKE NORVELL: Yeah, unfortunately he’ll be a guy that will be out this week. Going into this week, he’s had an up-and-down last few weeks. We were hopeful that we were kind of over the hump with it, but he had a little setback, and we’ll see how he progresses, and we’re going to push this week to work and get ready. You don’t see that in the timeline of his availability, so he’s one that we’re pretty certain will be out this week.
Q. When you look at Wake Forest, statistically they don’t look to be outstanding necessarily in any area, but they find a way to just be in these games and they’ve pulled out some of these wins. When you’ve watched Wake Forest, what have you seen from them? MIKE NORVELL: It’s a team that plays extremely hard. I think defensively they’re towards the top of our league defensively in a lot of statistical categories, but you see a defense that’s really playing at a high level. They are confident in what they’re asked to do. Obviously new coordinator, new staff there, so they’re growing each and every week. I thought they did an outstanding job this past weekend against SMU and really made things difficult for them in all ways. This is a team that they’ve got talented players. They’ve got guys that you look at their front, they’re going to show you three down, four down, they’re going to be aggressive in their movements, and it’s going to be a team that they’re going to play sideline to sideline. They play fast. Like I said, they’re a high-energy group and they can present some different schematic challenges with talented players. Offensively they’ve kind of gone through some of the ups and downs throughout the course of the year. I know that right now they’ve dealt with some quarterback injuries that have showed up, but I think both the quarterbacks have shown the ability to play at a high level. They’ve got some really good skill players. The Barnes kid at receiver I think is extremely talented. He’s explosive. You’ve got to always know where he’s at. Obviously Claiborne is one of the best running backs in our league, and he will be a guy I think that will be a pretty high draft pick you’ll hear this spring. But this is a team that can present challenges. Obviously you see that they’ve found a way in a lot of contests, and in all reality they got screwed out of the Georgia Tech win just at the end of it. But this is a team that can compete with anybody in our league, and we’re going to have to play our best game as we go into this week.
Q. When you go on the road recruiting, what is the message — I guess what questions are you getting from coaches and players and parents when you meet up with them or talk to them? MIKE NORVELL: Yeah, this past week it’s evaluation period so there’s not a whole lot of sitting other than with coaches. Coaches, they live it. They watch it. They understand. You see it still comes down to the result, but you see the style of play, you see it’s all about the individual players and how these guys will be able to transition in to be able to make an impact, to be able to fulfill what they want from their collegiate experience. We’ve got great relationships and I believe have done a good job of building that, but also you see great opportunity. You see a bunch of double-digit true freshmen that have come in and played, had the ability to play and have been playing at a high level. You see an offense that’s one of the best in the country in what we’ve been able to do with explosive plays, and obviously getting a lot of yards, scoring points. Defensively you see the opportunity to be able to go and attack and just some of the things that we’ve been able to accomplish, creating takeaways and explosive plays and the opportunities to be able to impact quarterbacks. Guys are looking at what is the place for me, how can I be put in position, and then they’ve got to visualize themselves with the opportunity to impact. Coaches, they see that. We played in a lot of close games that we’ve got to go take that step and finish for the result that we desire, but for recruits, when they’re looking at hey, where do I want to be, who do I want to be with, what do I want to be a part of, there’s a lot of confidence in what that is, and really for them, it’s just being able to stay focused on that because everybody on the team experiences losses. We lose a game, and the first question, are you still considering them, are you still with them or whatever, and then you stack that upon going through a negative streak, obviously there’s going to be a lot of questions. But it still comes down to the fit. It still comes down to where these guys see themselves in the best situation, the best place. There’s a lot of excitement for the opportunity that’s ahead and what they can be within this program.
Q. We’ve asked you before about how current players deal with outside noise and distractions, and this week was obviously louder than most. How did they do handling that? How did you address it? Was it any different than usual? MIKE NORVELL: Yeah, you have to address it as a coach because when you see — there’s sometimes that we talked about it after the Pitt game I know was one that you saw some guys play with a little bit of hesitation and some unnecessary situations with the plays there. Just trust that you’re going to go make the play rather than trying not to miss it. This last week, I did think there were some times we were trying to almost do too much in certain situations, and that’s from inside as a player just trying to go do all that you can to make the play to try to help get over the hump of when you feel that, whether it’s within, whether it’s from the outside. You want it so bad. You’ve got to stay true and trust who you are, trust who you’re being asked to do, and then just go out there and execute and have fun. But you talk about it as a coach; anytime there’s a lot of opinions, which there’s always going to be, whether it’s — sometimes opinions within your group, sometimes opinion from the outside, sometimes from friends, family, loved ones, and sometimes opinions from anybody that can get to you. You do talk about it, and it’s just, like I said at the beginning, it’s about doing your job. It’s about showing up and putting everything that you have, regardless of sometimes the chaos that can go on around you in the course of a game, sometimes just in living life with whatever circumstance might show up, it’s about showing up and giving all that you have with a detailed approach of going in and executing whatever the responsibility or task that you have in front of you.
Q. In that last game against Stanford, there were a couple instances on the sidelines with guys getting frustrated and emotional, which is understandable given the circumstances. Do you go back and revisit that with those guys individually in the days following — MIKE NORVELL: Oh, absolutely, and sometimes it’s days following, sometimes it’s immediately after a game, whether it’s — this is an emotional game. You want great emotion but you want to be in control of your emotion. That’s all part of it as players, coaches, everybody involved. There’s certain things where the awareness of every action and how important the details, the focus, being able to execute in the moment, that’s going to magnify — that needs to be magnified throughout the course of the game. Ultimately it’s still about what you do with it. It could be the first quarter, it could be the fourth quarter; you have to be on point because every play is going to matter. You could sit back over the last four weeks and pick any one of 100 plays and you’re going to find a different result to probably the overall outcome of what that contest was. You’ve got to control what you can control. We’ve also seen and of course four weeks there’s plenty of things that can’t control that can go for you or go against you. But as long as we can stay locked in on that, you can’t allow — we had a situation where there was a very questionable call in a situation where a player — players’ emotions to what that call was really affected the next play. That’s where it’s just like, man, you’ve got to — you’re not going to get every call. There’s going to be some good ones, there’s going to be some bad ones. There’s going to be some good plays and some bad plays that you experience, but you’ve got to make sure that you can refocus, lock in, be able to make any adjustment that’s necessary and then go and be your best for that next snap and that next play. That’s one of the reasons why you see the emotions of what they are sometimes from coaches to players, sometimes from coaches to coaches, just the awareness, man, this has to be fixed, this has to be dealt with in the moment, and then you follow up with that obviously after the game. You follow up and remind that throughout the course of the week and throughout the course of the season. There’s been plenty of players that I’ve coached over the years that might have started their career a certain way and how they reacted to circumstances. As you continue to point that out, as you continue to give them ownership of and confidence of what they can do in those situations, you see that growth and you see that carry on. A lot of the guys — I saw Renardo Green when we were out in California, Jarrian Jones came back last week, and to see the confidence of what they speak of, of how they can handle situations that are showing up at the next level through their time here. Both those guys had the ups and downs throughout their Florida State careers and dealt with a lot of pressure, noise, outside. They can do this, they can’t do this. They both became great players here and now they’re guys that are playing a lot starting there at the next level, and some of those lessons that they had to get harped on during their time here is now a real asset for them, you’ll hear, later in their career.
Q. Kind of a follow-up to that, knowing how important eye contact is to you and your players when you’re talking to them, at halftime at the Stanford game, it didn’t look like guys were fully listening to what you were saying before going into the locker room. Do you notice that at all? Is that a concern at all? Is that something that ends up being addressed? MIKE NORVELL: Yeah, I address all of it. There’s times that it’s still — even in that moment, why do those things show up. Well, you’re disappointed or this or whatever the feelings are. You can allow yourself to be distracted or you can — you make the choice to lock in on it. That’s why I always like seeing that eye contact. There’s plenty of games throughout our career or throughout my career where I’ve seen that guys are doing a good job, and really it’s an awareness to me where the follow-up needs to go. That’s all part of a process of what I do to make sure that there is the connection. What I like is the follow-up afterwards and the ownership afterwards of you can point to, hey, it might not have been exactly what you wanted or this is not where you want it to be at that point. But if you allow yourself to stay removed or to stay frustrated in feelings or whatever that might be, you might miss the next handful of plays that can continue to cost you or can continue to keep you from where you are and then you see the positive results from it, too, where guys can flush everything else that’s on the outside and stay focused on the task at hand, and that you can overcome even bad momentum or something that’s not going the way that you want it to go.
Q. We always ask in camp about leadership and guys evolving as leaders. In difficult times, have you seen any signs of guys who are trying to keep guys headed in the right direction? MIKE NORVELL: Yeah, we talked about that last week, and we’ve had a lot of guys that have taken a great deal of ownership in just where we are, some of the good and the bad, and it’s about trying to go and push and to make the difference through your work, through — you pour into others, you try to be the example, you try to encourage guys that might be at different places with where they are in performance or feelings or just overall emotions. That’s what I’m looking for from leaders, guys that are willing to be the example, guys that are willing to step up and go and challenge themselves to another level but also continue to push to uphold the standard of how we operate, what we do, whether it’s within the meetings, whether it’s out on the practice field, whether it’s within the community. The work that’s being done there, it’s all about giving of yourself by being available to be the example as a leader within the team. Anybody can get up and say, hey, this is what we need to do and this is what it looks like, but if you’re not doing it, if you’re not willing to actually go and put that on display, then you’re not a leader, so no one is actually going to listen to you anyway. That’s what I’m watching for, and that’s what I’ve been really pleased, even through the course of this last week, seeing guys truly take ownership, but also bringing that to the areas that it has to show up, bringing it to the practice field, bringing it within our locker room and within our facility on a daily basis, just trying to push this program and trying to push themselves to go be better.
Q. Big picture for you here: I think you would agree that it’s never been harder to win in college football, period. It’s really hard from week to week to win. Athletic departments have never been more impatient, it would seem, and it happened last night in Baton Rouge. I just wanted your overall opinions on the coaching profession in college football in 2025? MIKE NORVELL: I think being a coach is one of the most gratifying and rewarding professions you can be in because you get a chance to impact. If you’re a coach college, 18 to 22 year olds. I was talking to some of the high school coaches this last week, you’ve got 14 to 18 year olds. There are — it is a different age. You look at even high school — in the high school world with high school NIL, players leaving and going to new schools and transferring mid-season. There’s so much just unrest within the game, I would say, because of some of the dynamics of what we’re living in. But it is important that as a coach that you are willing to take hold of all the things that you can control in it and then to show the character, show the identity, to push forward and to be able to block out — because you can go look at different circumstances of what happened at different places, and that’s fine. But man, we’re blessed to be able to do what we do. I’ve been fortunate, this is my 10th year of being a head coach. Been able to see a lot, and I’ve seen some really good days. I’ve seen some extremely tough moments. Every day when you show up, I tell our players this all the time, we’re not guaranteed anything. We’ve had players that have had extreme tragedies within their own lives, whether it’s injury, whether it’s a tragedy on the outside that keeps them from the opportunity to continuing to play football, whether it’s a game, whether it’s a season, whether it’s a career, whatever that might be. You’re blessed to be in the moment, so you have to stay in the moment. For all things that when it comes to college football, it’s a wonderful game, it’s a wonderful sport. Obviously we represent a great institution, and the pride and the passion of college football is at an all-time high. So there are a lot of emotions that go into it because it’s a results-based business. We all understand that. We all — it’s like you hear every coach, this is what we signed up for. Still, you’ve got to go live it. With all the passion, all the emotion, it’s still what you’re willing to do on a daily basis as a leader or what you’re willing to do as a coach and try and inspire guys just to go be better and to put all that they have on display. But yeah, it’s definitely a different time, and it’s a different game than what it was five years ago. All the players, coaches and everybody involved, it’s a great challenge, but man, it’s so rewarding to be able to help guys on this journey to go form and develop who they are as men and to be able to make a difference to those that are around you.
Q. New football building is open; you guys have moved in. What’s been the response from players as far as what it’s like for them day-to-day, and how can it be more efficient as far as their day-to-day? MIKE NORVELL: Yeah, it’s been incredible. It’s a state-of-the-art facility. Obviously I think it’s one of the best in the United States of America. It’s been something that’s been on discussion for six years since I’ve been here, and we’re one week into it, and the amount of gratitude that I have — there’s been a lot of sacrifice from people that have invested to make this a reality. There’s been a lot of sacrifice within our program to — just with what we’ve had to do operationally to make it happen. Now that we’re finally in there, to see the gratitude of our players, that’s one of the things even as we went in last week, you talked about the leadership of just showing up every day and representing those that made this happen. That’s been something that has been hit on from guys in that locker room, of how we respect it through the work, how we respect it through how we take care of it. There’s a great deal of pride in being a Florida State Seminole.
