For the better part of this dreadful football season for Florida State, it feels like all we have done is search for answers. Whether you are the fan base, the media, or especially the coaching staff, there has been continuous pressing to find out the how and why for one of the most shocking and rapid falls from grace this sport has seen.

The proposed answers have not only been wide and varied, but seem to evolve as this team continues to show a new (and more depressing) side of it every week. From the snub breaking the culture of the team, to bad portal evaluations, to lack of talent and bad game management, to poor high school recruiting and poor coaching at nearly every position - there has been no shortage of ideas. And all of them may have been true and may continue to be true.

But as I sat at my desk at home following Florida State's blowout loss at home against North Carolina, I thought back to the coaches' luncheon that was held before spring practices began almost eight months ago.

One of the key narratives going into spring practices was the retention of Florida State's coaching staff under Mike Norvell. Only three coaches had left the program in Norvell's tenure prior to this season. Offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham went to Oregon and has subsequently just led his alma mater, Arizona State, to bowl eligibility in just his second season. Defensive backs coach Marcus Woodson went to Arkansas as a co-defensive coordinator. Linebackers coach Chris Marve left the Seminoles to become the defensive coordinator at Virginia Tech.

26 out of 134 FBS teams didn't make a change to its coaching staff during the offseason this past year and Florida State was one of them (and the only team in the ACC to do so). At the time, this was viewed as a positive thing; that the continuity had allowed Florida State to develop a deeply rooted, tight-knit culture that would continue to be successful.

Well, that certainly aged well.

But through the lens of hindsight, I recalled that spring luncheon. I specifically recalled the conversations that I had with offensive coordinator Alex Atkins and defensive coordinator Adam Fuller where I asked about the continuity within the staff and what that did for the program.

"It can go two ways," Atkins said. "You can get complacent because you know each other and know how you operate. But if you've truly been working together and building a relationship, now you can strain each other even more because you know without a shadow of a doubt that you have each other's back. So now you can have even more uncomfortable conversations and even more pushing because we understand what approach we need to take and we understand our true relationship off the field (just like players). So you can say that its an advantage because we are all the same but it can also be a disadvantage if were still not pushing each other, making sure we are on point and challenging each other to be better. That's Coach Norvell's approach."

"Sometimes change is good," Fuller said. But I think from the same standpoint, anytime you can create continuity, I think it has its positives too if you have the right people. Because continuity could become stale but if you can inspire and create thought-provoking conversations and you're not just going through the process each day, you're creating different ways to think of things, you're about to create different ideas - I think that's what it all really grows on and that's what we have."

Leaving both of those conversations, the transparency and awareness in both of their responses was something that I appreciated. It was good to see them both acknowledge the negative in what was being primarily spun as a positive. But talking about those potential pitfalls and actually navigating them this season have proven to be two different beasts.

With four weeks left in the season, changes are looming heavily over the program. In just eight months, a coaching staff in which the story was how they notably stayed together, is about to be dismantled. And it's likely not going to be a singular change, maybe not even a handful of changes, but a complete overhaul of the coordinators and assistant coaching staff. The irony isn't exactly subtle. What has transpired this season is indefensible and the writing is on the wall in the boldest font available.

I would imagine what bothers fans the most is not the lack of talent and missed evaluations in the transfer portal, but the lack of effort, physicality and mental toughness of players that have been in Tallahassee for much longer. To see valuable contributors of last season's ACC Championship-winning team not only regress but appear completely apathetic in playing winning football has been shocking (to steal a word recently used by Norvell himself).

Now what I once thought to be a happy coincidence back in March has added an interesting wrinkle to the conversation of what has gone wrong.

Both Adam Fuller and Alex Atkins brought up the danger of complacency unprompted when asked about staff continuity. I didn't ask about the negatives in my question and I certainly didn't expect them to say something so similar in interviews that were held separately during a free-for-all in a crowded conference hall.

I don't mean to say that complacency is the sole masked villain behind Florida State's woes this season. But I do find it interesting how these comments foreshadowed a football team that seems to have lost its drive to compete after 'The Climb' came to a screeching halt. That applies to the coaches just as much as the players, if not more. It's on the coaches' shoulders to find a way to motivate their kids to compete. There has been a gash in that telephone line all season.

Nobody expected Florida State to come out in Dublin, Ireland, with all the intangibles and characteristics of a Mike Norvell team missing in action. After an offseason of commiserating about the college football playoff, you would have expected a belts to butts mentality — a mentality that was simply not there.

As far fetched as it sounds, is it possible that Atkins and Fuller may have had an inkling of the challenges that they were about to face with the 2024 Florida State Seminoles? Or is this just cruel irony and unfortunate foreshadowing that the benefit of hindsight has provided?

As the season comes to a close this month, maybe complacency deserves more of the blame among the wide variety of things that have aided to this collapse.

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