Schoffel: NFL Draft doesn't reveal FSU's issues, it merely reflects them

The NFL Draft is not the end-all, be-all when it comes to evaluating the health of a college football program.

But it’s a pretty good mirror.

And just like the mirrors we walk in front of in the morning before heading off to work or school, it offers us a chance to reflect on how we’ve been living our lives.

Have we been taking care of ourselves? Have we been getting enough sleep and eating healthy ... at least on occasion? Or have we let ourselves go?

The reflection is seldom a surprise. It’s more a reminder.

And while we can come up with all kinds of tricks and mental gymnastics to feel better about what we see — combing our hair a certain way, standing at a certain angle or in the perfect light — the image typically is what it is.

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And once again, through the mirror of this 2022 NFL Draft, we are once again reminded of the current image of Florida State Football.

One player selected. And it was a guy who was on campus for less than a calendar year.

Just imagine if Jermaine Johnson hadn’t transferred in to FSU last January. If he had stayed at Georgia and been one of the 47 other players from the Bulldogs' defense selected in these seven rounds.

Not only would the 2021 season have been more unbearable, but the Seminoles would have gone without a single draft pick for the first time in nearly 40 years. Thanks to Johnson, only seven schools have longer active streaks.

But again — even though we feel for guys like Jashaun Corbin and Keir Thomas, who were nice players during their brief careers at Florida State — it’s not exactly a stunner they ended up signing deals as undrafted free agents.

Corbin rushed for over 800 yards and had a few highlight-worthy runs, and he certainly was the best all-around running back on this roster. But was he special like a Cam Akers or a Dalvin Cook? Or did the draft's mirror tell us what we already knew?

The same goes for Keir Thomas. While he was a huge addition for this football program — and had a solid college career overall, between here and South Carolina — the reality is he didn’t get selected for the Senior Bowl. He wasn’t invited to the NFL Combine. And he wouldn’t have put up very impressive numbers if he had.

But the point here isn’t to diminish guys who were some of the brightest spots in this program the last few years. I think we're all hoping they prove the NFL scouts wrong when they get their tryouts for camp spots — Corbin is joining the New York Giants, Thomas signed with L.A. Rams, WR Andrew Parchment got an invite from the Carolina Panthers, and OL Devontay Love-Taylor is heading to Tampa Bay.

Florida State fans should be thankful that each of those transfers -- along with many others -- chose to finish their careers at Florida State.

Could you imagine if Mike Norvell hadn’t been able to bring those guys in? Would even five wins have been possible in 2021?

That is really the most significant revelation in all of this.

That many of the most productive players in these last couple of seasons — the transfers who came in to save the day — were generally the best players at their positions. And yet only Johnson was considered worthy of a draft pick.

The rest were better than what you had. In most cases, they were the best players on your roster. But they weren't any better than the guys on the teams you compete against.

Again, though, that's not really a revelation.

We all watched the games. And even though the 2021 team looked more organized, and seemed to be playing with more cohesiveness and determination than the two or three seasons before (at least in the last eight games), it’s not as if we saw a bunch of difference-makers running around.

Corbin was the best running back. He didn’t get drafted.

Parchment might have been the most talented veteran receiver -- and if it wasn’t him, it was Pokey Wilson. Parchment didn’t get drafted, and Wilson probably wouldn’t have either, or he wouldn’t be returning for a sixth season.

Other than Johnson, safety Jammie Robinson — yet another transfer — was by far the best player on defense. And he also wouldn’t have come back this season if he had gotten a better draft evaluation in December.

Let that sink in for a moment. Robinson is a superstar on this team. The leading tackler by a mile. And when he reached out to the NFL after earning first-team All-ACC honors last season, their advice was to stay in Tallahassee for another year.

We don’t need to dwell on how we got here. We’ve covered it again and again and again.

Bad evaluations and a lack of effort in recruiting at the end of Jimbo Fisher’s tenure.

A transition class under Willie Taggart in 2018 — one that has seen 16 of 21 players either move on to other programs or give up football entirely, and only one (Asante Samuel) make it to the NFL so far.

And a follow-up class in 2019 from Taggart that wasn’t much better. If you recall, the former FSU coach shot for the stars for most of that recruiting cycle — trying to land guys like Kayvon Thibodeaux, Trey Sanders and Evan Neal — before having to settle for far less when the 2018 season went in the tank.

So here we are.

One player drafted for the second time in three years.

Before this stretch, the last time FSU endured a one-player draft was 2009. The last time before that was 1987.

The Draft used to be a Florida State showcase. Now, if that’s all you watched, you’d have a hard time telling the Seminoles are still playing the sport.

FSU hasn’t had a quarterback selected by the NFL since Jameis Winston in 2015. The ‘Noles haven’t had an offensive lineman picked since converted defensive end Rick Leonard went in the fourth round five years ago.

They have had just one wide receiver drafted since Rashad Greene, and that was seventh-rounder Auden Tate in 2018.

And people wonder why Florida State hasn’t been winning games or going to bowls?

The harshest reality of all is that even in an era of the transfer portal — when FSU has brought in like two dozen experienced players the last two years — it's difficult to really fill a roster with difference-makers. For every Jermaine Johnson, there are going to be a lot more Andrew Parchments.

And Norvell hasn’t been able to recruit high school players anywhere close to the level Fisher did when he took over — for a variety of reasons. So while it was after year three that Fisher really started producing big-time draft classes, that's probably not going to be the case for Norvell.

This roster is improving. And there appears to be some real talent -- potentially elite talent -- in the younger classes.

But we already knew this rebuild was going to take time.

These recent drafts, as uncomfortable as they might be to see, only show us what we already knew to be true.

Contact managing editor Ira Schoffel at ira@warchant.com and follow @IraSchoffel on Twitter.

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Talk about this story with other Florida State football fans in the Tribal Council