Florida State coach Mike Norvell enters a pivotal third season in 2022. He’s still searching for his first bowl appearance, but he got one-sixth of the way there on Saturday with a convincing 47-7 win over Duquesne in which his team rushed for more than 400 yards.
However, Norvell’s Seminoles face a tricky early season test next week when they travel to New Orleans to face LSU and what should be a hostile Superdome crowd. Though that doesn’t really compare to opening at home against an FCS opponent, Norvell said the Week 0 outing helped prepare his team for its first real test in the Tigers.
“Anytime you get experience, I think it helps,” he said, per On3. “This was the first time that our team, this team, got a chance to take the field together. You’re always going to have new faces. There’s a lot of true freshmen that played, transfers, returning players that came out and plays better than they played, and that’s a good thing to see.
“So we’ll take the experience that we had tonight, and we’ve got to build upon it. We get an extra day leading up to Sunday night kick versus LSU, so we need every one of those moments from film watching to on-the-field practice to prepare and improve so that we are our best come next Sunday night because that’s still always going to be the standard. It’s not about who we’re playing. It’s about us. It’s about that constant growth.”
FSU did show some signs of progress after last season’s 5-7 finish, but the Dukes are a much less talented team than the Tigers. With the [autotag]Brian Kelly[/autotag] era set to begin on Sunday night, his debut could also help determine the outcome of Norvell’s tenure in Tallahassee.
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