He was part of a Florida State signing class ranked No. 3 in the country.

It was a group that featured five 5-star recruits, 10 4-stars and five 3-stars. Judging by average star rating, it was the most talented recruiting class in the country.

It was said to be the reward for the Seminoles' unparalleled success over the previous two seasons, when they won 27 of 28 games, claimed the school's third national championship and grabbed a spot in the first ever College Football Playoff.

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Cole Minshew smiles and shakes his head when asked about the way things have worked out since then. About the numerous players from that class who either didn't pan out for Florida State or had to give up football due to injury. About the losses that have piled up, the two head coaching changes that shook the program, and the number of former teammates who are now suiting up for other schools.

"It's been really crazy seeing all the people come and go," Minshew said.

Florida State will honor more than a dozen seniors before the Alabama State game on Saturday. Several are walk-ons, transfers or fourth-year players who never redshirted.

Of those original 20 prospects who signed in 2015 and should be fifth-year seniors right now, only two are remaining -- Minshew and fellow offensive lineman Abdul Bello.

And Minshew might have overcome the greatest odds of all.

With a population of just under 1,200, Broxton is one of the smallest municipalities in Georgia.

There's a Dollar General on the main drag and a couple of other local shops interspersed with churches. If you're looking for fast food, though, or a doctor or Wal-Mart, you'll likely have to head about nine miles south to Douglas, the county seat.

Cole Minshew's hometown, Pridgen, Ga., is about five miles outside of Broxton.

There's a green, rectangular road sign along Highway 441 letting travelers know that Pridgen exists, but that's about it.

"There's a highway that goes through it," Minshew said. "And then nothing."

Nothing isn't exactly accurate.

If one turns down the right dirt road and winds back a couple of miles, they'll come across the livestock farm where Minshew and his younger brother, Cameron, were raised by their paternal grandparents, Arthur and JoAnn Minshew.

Arthur worked for an asphalt company. JoAnn was a pharmacy technician. The whole family helped with the farm, but JoAnn ran the show.

"She was really like my mom," Cole Minshew said. "She raised me from when I was like 7 or 8. She was awesome. She was strict ... but a good strict."

JoAnn also was the primary driving force behind Cole's football career. She would make sure he was at practices and games, and she was his biggest supporter. But when he wasn't giving great effort -- Minshew admits he could be "lazy" at times in his youth -- she was the first one to let him know that wasn't acceptable.

"She didn't really know everything that was going on football-wise," Minshew said. "But if she saw something that she thought I was doing wrong ... she was on me."

That was often the case during Minshew's first two years at Coffee High School in Douglas.

Despite being one of the biggest kids in school, Minshew almost never got on the field as a freshman or sophomore. Granted, he was playing at one of the largest programs in South Georgia and the Trojans had three future Division-I players starting on their offensive line, but it did not sit well at all with JoAnn.

"I was just bench-riding the whole time," Minshew said. "She kept getting on my tail about it. I guess she knew what I could be. She knew I should have been starting since I got to high school."

Frustrated about his situation, and wondering if his time would ever come, Minshew often would come home complaining about his circumstances. Perhaps if he transferred to another school things would be better. Maybe he just needed a fresh start.

His grandmother wouldn't hear of it.

"If we ever started something, we were raised to ... we can't quit," Minshew said.

"She was the one who stayed on him," remembered Coffee High head coach Robby Pruitt. "If we had a problem with Cole, whether it was in football or academics or anything, we would call her, and she was on top of him. There was no doubt who was driving that train."

By the time Minshew was a junior, something finally clicked. Those older linemen moved on to college, his work ethic improved, and almost overnight he blossomed into a dominating high school lineman.

By the end of that season, colleges began to take notice. Soon, he was getting letters and calls from major college football powers across the Southeast.

They weren't all welcomed, however -- at least not by JoAnn.

"After my junior year, I started getting interest. She looked at me and she said, 'I don't care where you go. But please don't go to Miami,'" Minshew recalled this week with a laugh. "She said, 'I hate that town. I hate everything about it. I really don't want you to go to Miami.' I said, 'All right.'

"First offer ... Miami."

As it turned out, JoAnn had nothing to worry about.

The February before his senior year, Minshew was on his way to a recruiting visit at Auburn when then-FSU defensive coordinator Charles Kelly called and asked him to stop by Tallahassee for the Seminoles' Junior Day.

Minshew wasn't necessarily a huge Florida State fan, but he was intrigued because it was closer to home. He also knew JoAnn, who was in her late-60s and already experiencing health problems, would be much happier about the 2 1/2-hour drive.

"I came here, and I just loved it," Minshew said. "They offered me on the spot. Coach [Jimbo] Fisher called me in the office and he said, 'What do I gotta do to make you a Seminole?' I said, 'Offer me.' He said, 'All right.' And I said, 'All right, I'm coming.'"

When he arrived at Florida State in the summer of 2015, Cole Minshew's first real acquaintance was head athletic trainer Jake Pfeil.

Because Minshew had sustained an ankle injury shortly before enrolling, FSU asked him to move down to Tallahassee before the other players so he could begin the treatment and rehabilitation process.

It would be the beginning of a close -- and extremely important -- relationship.

Like Minshew, Pfeil grew up in a rural area (Madison County, Fla.). They had similar interests, and they shared the same laid-back personalities and dry senses of humor.

They also would spend a great deal of time together professionally.

After missing his first season due to injury, Minshew started three games as a redshirt freshman in 2016 and then all 13 games in 2017. While he didn't miss any substantial time that year due to injury, he did start experiencing intermittent issues with nerves in his neck and shoulder.

After occasional collisions, Minshew would experience what is commonly referred to as a "stinger" -- when nerves are compressed or stretched after impact.

In most cases, stingers are not terribly concerning for football players. They result in a tingling sensation and a temporary reduction in strength. But if everything checks out during a routine examination, the player is permitted to return to action.

Minshew, unfortunately, was having them more and more frequently. They were coming so often that he learned to manage them himself by literally shaking them out of his arm ... until one day late in the 2018 season.

"I couldn't shake off the one in the N.C. State game," Minshew said.

The pain didn't go away this time. The strength in his arm didn't return.

After ordering an MRI and other tests, Pfeil and FSU's medical personnel discovered the problem. If Minshew had any hopes of playing football again -- let alone relieve the pain he was experiencing -- we would need to undergo surgery to remove a damaged disc in his neck.

The procedure, which is known as an ACDF (anterior cervical discectomy and fusion), is not uncommon. It involves removing the bad disc and inserting a graft to fuse the bones above and below.

There was, however, no guarantee that it would heal well enough for Minshew to return to the field.

"He's not trying to come back to a desk job," Pfeil said.

"They said if you want to continue to play football, you'll need to do this," Minshew said. "I was like, 'All right, sign me up.'"

The surgery was conducted in January of this year, and it went off without a hitch. If the rehab and healing went as well, there was every reason to believe Minshew would be anchoring the Seminoles' offensive line in time for preseason camp.

"I woke up from the surgery and automatically felt better," Minshew said. "I didn't hardly have any pain this whole entire time. It was just waiting for the bone to grow."

Said Pfeil: "The ultimate goal was to take that full eight months, right up into August, and get him cleared for contact. That was the plan."

Throughout each of his first four years at Florida State, Cole Minshew had a familiar face cheering him on from the Doak Campbell Stadium stands.

Just as she had done during his youth football days, middle school and high school, JoAnn was almost always there watching, supporting her grandson and his teammates.

"She was at every game," Minshew said. "She came every time she got a chance."

In the weeks before his senior season, though, while he waited to find out if he would be cleared medically to play, Minshew began to worry about his grandmother. JoAnn hadn't been feeling well for some time, and the doctors wanted to run some tests to see if they could determine the reason.

While Cole had always stayed level-headed and calm while coping with his own ailments, this was entirely different.

"You could really see it on him," Pfeil said. "It was the most stressed I'd ever seen him."

It was about to get worse.

After putting her through a battery of examinations, the doctors in Georgia came back with bad news. The worst possible news.

JoAnn had cancer.

"A week later, she was dead," Cole said earlier this week, his voice breaking.

JoAnn Minshew died at home on Monday, July 22 -- a week and a half before the Florida State football team would open preseason camp.

Her funeral was two days later. She was 71.

Cole and his younger brother, Cameron, were two of the pallbearers.

With his world turned upside down, and the woman who raised him no longer by his side, Cole Minshew returned to Tallahassee the following week. He had to undergo one more test -- a CT scan -- to find out if he would be cleared to play his final season with the Seminoles.

At least if that came back positive, Minshew thought, he would be able to throw himself back into football and take out his frustrations on the field.

He wouldn't be so lucky.

After reviewing the X-rays of Minshew's neck, the surgeon determined it wouldn't be safe for him to return to contact. At least not yet.

The bone graft wasn't completely healed.

"He said, 'It's just not right where I need it to be to play football,'" Pfeil said. "For anybody else -- for a normal person -- this is fine. You're good. It's going to keep developing. ... It just wasn't as advanced as he would like it to be to play football."

Pfeil would be the one to break the news to Minshew.

The timing couldn't have been worse, just days after JoAnn's death. But there was no way to soften the blow.

"Me and Jake are real close. He knows how I am," Minshew said. "I don't want him to sugarcoat it."

In an instant, Minshew would be struck with a wave of emotions. The prevailing feeling, he said, was anger, not sadness.

"It's like somebody stole something from me," he said. "After I got the funeral and all that stuff settled, then I came back here and found out I couldn't play. It was tough."

"OK, I'm done [with football]," was his next thought.

Pfeil and the other medical personnel involved weren't entirely sure that was the case. It wasn't as if the surgery had failed. It simply wasn't completely healed.

They decided to give it another eight weeks and take one last look.

If it worked, Minshew would still be able to play the second half of his final college season. If it didn't, he then would move on with life after football. He would focus on finishing his degree and embarking on a career in coaching.

Minshew wasn't overly optimistic, but he wasn't about to give up hope.

"All I know is football," he said. "I was just trying to get back and do what I love. I've done this my whole life. I don't know what else I would do. And I love the team. I always want to be out there. I want to be with my guys. I just want to play."

As if he hadn't gone through enough during those dark days of July, Cole Minshew soon found himself facing another challenge.

In the days before her death, JoAnn had all of the family's financial affairs transferred into his name. Because his grandfather barely had a middle-school education, Cole was the best choice to make sure all the bills got paid and that her funeral was handled properly.

In a matter of days, he went from grief to anger to confusion.

"It'll make you grow up fast," Minshew said.

Since the lineman wasn't cleared to practice anyway, Pfeil approached former head coach Willie Taggart and asked him if Minshew could go home to Pridgen for a few weeks during camp. It would give him time to straighten things out at the farm, and it would perhaps take his mind off of football for awhile.

Taggart agreed.

"He was awesome. Completely understanding," Minshew said. "He pretty much told me to stay as long as I needed to. And I appreciate him for it."

Said Pfeil: "I think that really helped. He was so worried about it when he was here. He was crippled by it. But when he came back a few weeks later, you could see it on his face -- he was glad to be back here."

When Minshew wasn't with the Seminoles at the start of preseason, there were rumors that he had left the team. That he would be medically disqualified and his career was over.

In reality, as soon as he put the family's finances in order, he couldn't wait to get back.

"The whole time I was gone, I was just trying to figure all that stuff out," he said. "But by the end of the three weeks, I knew this is not for me. I felt like I was just there spinning wheels. I wasn't doing anything -- just wasting time. That really motivated me to come back and work harder and play."

After returning to Tallahassee in August, Minshew and Pfeil put together a plan of attack.

They had no way of knowing what the follow-up CT scan would reveal, but if it ended up being good news, they wanted to be prepared.

"We have to assume that this is gonna go our way," Pfeil told him. "That at that eight-week mark, this is gonna go our way. And if it does go our way, there's no reason the next day, you can't go out there and get back in it."

So for the next several weeks, Minshew would prepare for practice like the rest of his teammates. Instead of taking part in team activities, he would go through individual workouts in a corner of the Seminoles' practice fields.

He'd run sprints. He'd work on his footwork. He'd push blocking sleds.

"He was working hard -- full pads, over there by himself," Pfeil said. "Every day."

"The only thing I really couldn't do was make contact," Minshew said. "I was still running and lifting and doing everything. I just couldn't hit anybody."

Finally, in early October, they got the results from the follow-up exam.

This time, the news was good.

As long as everyone else involved was comfortable with Minshew returning to the field, the surgeon said he would give his blessing.

The next day, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2019, Cole Minshew was back in full practice.

Four days later, he would suit up for the Seminoles against Clemson. He played six snaps in that game.

"There were some springy moments, where he was kind of jumping around a little bit -- more than Cole normally would," Pfeil said. "He's not the kind of guy to talk about it, but you could see the smile on his face."

One week later, Minshew played 58 snaps at Wake Forest.

He since has started each of the past three games.

On Saturday, he will play his final game at Doak Campbell Stadium. He will be honored with FSU's other seniors during pregame ceremonies. His father and step-mother will be in attendance.

For Minshew -- and the entire program -- it has been a tumultuous five years. The wins soon turned into losses. The head coach who recruited him left on his own; the next one was fired earlier this month.

Players also have come and gone. Some left early for the NFL, some gave up the sport or were dismissed from the team, and some others are now suiting up for other schools.

Through it all, Minshew has remained focused on why he came to Florida State. He says the love he felt during that first recruiting visit has never diminished, and he's excited to finish the journey he started with his grandmother all those years ago.

Only two of the 20 players who signed with FSU in 2015 will be recognized as fifth-year seniors on Saturday.

Cole Minshew will be one of them.

"No, God no," Minshew said, when asked this week if he ever considered transferring. "No shot. I wouldn't ever leave here. This school's done way too much for me. All the surgeries. The MRIs. All the stuff they've invested in me? No shot I'd ever leave."

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