Jordan Travis, Jared Verse explain how Florida State is maintaining its edge in 2023

Florida State has a lot to live up to in 2023. After four straight losing seasons, the Seminoles made quite the leap with 10 wins, including a return to the bowl game where they won the Cheez-It Bowl.

With that return to success coming so rapidly, though, how can FSU expect to bottle that up and not become complacent? To both Jared Verse and Jordan Travis, they say it’ll be by staying close to their roots. They, much like the rest of the Seminoles, understand where they started and, therefore, don’t take how far they’ve come just in the last year for granted.

“I’m just never trying to forget where I came from. I’ve always had a chip on my shoulder, I’ve always been looked at as like, ‘He’s not going to make it, he’s not going to do nothing special, don’t expect too much of him’. And I’ve tried to keep that mindset,” Verse said. “People try to congratulate you, tell you how good you are, how proud they are of you. But I’m never gonna let that get to my head. To me, I’m still that kid that only had the one offer and had to grind to get here. In my mind, I’m still that…I’m still trying to keep that edge, keep that mentality going.”

“I feel like my career has been a roller coaster. Sophomore year? I got booed a little bit. I’ve been down in the dumps a lot. I’ve come a long way. But I couldn’t have done it without my teammates or my family,” added Travis. “We know where we came from. We had a losing season for two, three seasons straight. (That) wasn’t the standard at Florida State. So we know where we came from. It all comes from the work in the offseason. Coach Norvell pushes us really hard in the offseason. So, when you get to the game field, it’s pretty easy.”

In 2022, Florida State found success that it hadn’t experienced since the end of Jimbo Fisher’s tenure in Tallahassee. It started with their thrilling win over LSU at the start of their year and carried over to the end of the campaign as the Seminoles closed on a fairly dominant six-game winning streak.

Still, Verse, Travis, and the rest of Florida State’s program refuse to accept last season as their ceiling. They also aren’t taking in any of the positive or negative commentaries that came with their bounceback season. FSU is focused on themselves and, in doing so, are ready to come out and post an even better year heading into this fall.