Column: Camp illustrates how Norvell, 'Noles climbing

We can’t tell you how many games Florida State will win in 2022 but after fall camp we can tell you this: The Seminoles have looked better this year than they did in 2021 and a damn sight better than when they reported in 2020.

You may be wondering why?

Glad you asked. Reasons No. 1 thought 3 set up compelling reason No. 4 but no peaking or it will spoil my close.

FSU welcomed only a handful of first-year players to 2022 fall camp. The vast majority of the team went through spring together, including 19 incoming freshmen and transfers, who entered in January.

The 2022 team knows the drill – no pun intended – and what the coaches expect. No longer do you see coaches burning precious practice time teaching players how to do the drills, or correcting their every step, there’s now an uninterrupted and productive flow to practice.

The Seminoles, who were the youngest team in the nation last year, are growing right before our very eyes. The veterans are setting a good example for the youngsters and correcting missteps even before an assistant coach can do it.

There are 33 players on the 2022 team who have started at least one game since Norvell arrived (this includes specialists like Ryan Fitzgerald and Alex Mastromanno). But that isn’t counting recent transfers, who bring starting experience with them to Tallahassee.

At the press luncheon right before the start of fall camp, we asked Norvell this question: Is the expectation different now than it was your first or second year here?

“I believe that the expectation is always for growth,” Norvell said. “We have a foundation set and that's a difference.”

What that is, is a mouthful.

Let’s be frank. There hasn’t been a foundation since Jimbo Fisher began flirtations with LSU, a year before he chose to leave for Texas A&M. Whatever foundation has been set was set on the shifting sands of coaching changes.

Don’t mean to rehash the past but it’s instructive to see the trajectory of this team.

The 2020 team had a bad case of emotional whiplash. Over a period of four years, they were asked to embrace the philosophy of three very different head coaches along with the schemes, terminology, expectations, and standards, of multiple coordinators and position coaches.

The 2020 spring practice ended abruptly on the third day because of Covid. Any hope Novell had of digging the footers for a sustainable foundation were dashed as players were forced home. Instead of eye-to-eye daily contact in the spring and offseason – a time when players and first-year coaches size one another up – there were Zoom calls.

Any hope for the players to bond in the weight room, to push each other, and to establish team leadership, were replaced by distance learning and working out in your carport or high school weight room, which is not a recipe for success for a first-year coach.

When those players reported back in August, they looked nothing like the players who reported back this year. After more than a year back on campus together, the 2022 team is bigger, stronger and very much more bought in to Norvell’s expectations and standards.

That’s the definition of a foundation.

“I believe we are going to be a much better football team than what we were a year ago” Norvell said at the opening of camp. “You look at last year's outcomes and in all but one game, we were sitting there with an opportunity to win at the very end. In one game we turned the ball over six times, so when you go through it, and dissect all the reasons why, then it's time to apply the answers.

“This is a team that has a foundation that I believe is set. Now it's time to go take those steps.”

Camp is now over and with the home opener approaching, Norvell was asked to assess the progress over 18 practices.

"I would say probably the overall understanding of the necessity to the push,” he said. “The focus on those little things. One of the things I like is if you have a player make a mistake, their understanding of what it was. And every player is going to have a mistake, coaches will have mistakes, but when they can, in the moment, have an understanding of the why, I think that’s monumental. Because then you can see the way they adapt the lesson to the next rep. Or apply the lesson. Those are things that I appreciate. You can’t get that if you just go through the motions."

Florida State hasn’t had depth in years, especially quality depth, which affected how hard the coaches could work the team in preparation for a game.

Last year FSU dressed 12 scholarship linemen after Thomas Shrader, a promising freshman center, was injured in the spring, and redshirt freshman center Maurice Smith was injured in the fall and missed three games. Whatever the odds were for going to a bowl game dropped as the Seminoles had only seven or eight linemen they could depend on, including three redshirt freshmen.

Last year’s lack of depth hurt every single day at practice, when trying to prepare for the upcoming opponent. You can’t grind as much during the week, or build the continuity you need, with starters nursing injuries in the whirlpool.

By contrast, the 2022 team had 20 offensive linemen coming into camp, 50 percent more than in recent years. Injuries are never good, but they are not devastating with 20 linemen, many of whom have a modicum of playing experience. Next man up and keep grinding.

While FSU has more depth overall, the Seminoles lack a game-tested QB2. Until Tate Rodemaker or AJ Duffy prove themselves in game action, we’ll hold our breath. Both backups have progressed in fall camp but until you do it in live action, you ain’t done it yet.

The only other position that’s thin is at linebacker, where Randy Shannon has four players with starting experience returning with Kalen DeLoach, Amari Gainer and DJ Lundy as well as UCF transfer Tatum Bethune, who has been praised throughout camp.

Proverbs tells us: “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”

It is a tried-and-true human reality.

The increased number of players at each position is leading to more-competitive practices, which makes practice meaningful as playing time is now on the line. I’m not just talking about wide receivers battling defensive backs for 50-50 balls, I’m talking about the growing competition within each position group.

“When it comes to motivation, the days of a coach planting a boot in a player’s hind end have been replaced by recruiting better freshmen, or transfers, who can challenge the existing players,” said offensive tackle Robert Scott. “Nothing says motivation like the threat of lost playing time.”

Scott is exactly right. A number of players on the offensive line are challenging for playing time this year. The maturation of underclassmen, the addition of transfers and some impressive freshmen has created competition. And the numbers now allow the coaches more latitude in terms of creating the intensity and physicality with which they can practice and scrimmage.

Iron is sharpening iron within each position group on offense to determine the pecking order for practice situations against the defense, which is also waging war for playing time.

There’s something very personal and important on the line, game day playing time, and these camp drills and scrimmages are the fields on which battlefield promotions are earned.

The battles intensified throughout the camp with defensive backs jamming receivers, redirecting routes and contesting passes. Players began to become chippy with each other. Passing windows tightened, which forces quarterbacks to be more accurate with their throws. You saw the competition between receivers and defensive backs on running plays too as they engage in downfield blocking.

It’s a beautiful thing to see develop as competition turns practice from drudgery to fun.

Let me flash back a couple of decades to offer perspective.

The early 1980s practices looked like work and of course they were but by the middle 1980s, something significant changed. Bobby Bowden’s staff had enjoyed success on the recruiting trail in 1984 and 1985 and suddenly those freshmen were competing and winning playing time.

Tuesday’s practice was as competitive as gameday. There was more spring in the players’ steps as they knew what was waiting for them on the other side of the tunnel: player-led competition.

Guys like Odell Haggins and Deion Sanders raised the bar in terms of work ethic and in terms of verbal challenges. You’ve heard the stories and they are real. Board drills, where an offensive lineman was pitted against a defensive lineman, became personal wars. Deion would taunt FSU’s receivers, then deny them, the same way in a Tuesday practice as he would an opponent on Saturday. Goal-line drills were truly as exciting as game day as the entire defense, coaches included, would celebrate every stop and the entire offense, coaches included, would celebrate every score.

The players and coaches had to bring their “A game” or teammates on the other side of the ball would embarrass them.

Each successful recruiting class thereafter added more talent and therefore more competition for playing time. Over the period of the Dynasty, iron sharpened iron at an increasingly higher level.

Let’s be very clear, this 2022 team does not have the quality of depth the Dynasty Era teams enjoyed. Not yet. Quality depth of that ilk will require a series of successful recruiting classes, but for the first time in a very long time, you can see the competition returning to practice and the fun of playing football with it.

Camp is over. The Seminoles are now in game week, preparing to play someone other than themselves, which must be a welcome relief for the players and coaches. While Norvell worked situations into the practice schedule to keep it from becoming monotonous, it was time for camp to end. The Seminoles now face Duquesne, a team they haven’t played 18 times in the last 20 days, a team with different personnel, formations, tendencies and check calls.

Now it will be time to see how these third-year players adapt to whatever an opponent throws at them in a game.

"It’s one thing when the defense just presents a normal, basic look," tight ends coach Chris Thomsen said. "But when they start to do all the things that defenses do now with field and boundary pressures, with movements, with different things with coverages and disguises, you see them start to get it and see it like you see it. … That’s the fun part of coaching when you can see a group that you’ve had, and they start to put it all together."

We’re looking forward to seeing FSU play someone other than themselves – preferably plural – and then we’ll have a much better idea of how many wins there are in this football team.

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