Mike Norvell: 'I can't wait to watch this team play'

The Florida State Seminoles, led by head coach Mike Norvell, are getting ready to kick off the 2024 season with a road trip to Dublin to take on the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. Just like the fans, Norvell is excited to watch this Seminoles team take the field.

As he explained ahead of that trip, he’s seen the team put in the work to be successful and that’s become a sort of identity. It’s that identity that excited Norvell about the team.

“This team has been about the work,” Mike Norvell said. “That’s what I always desire is that you have a team that you don’t have to push. These guys, you put the work in front of them, and they go running after it. I really have been proud of them for their approach to it. This is not a team that sits around and complains about what’s in front of them. They go and work and attack it.”

Florida State is coming off a bittersweet season, which saw the Seminoles go unbeaten in the regular season and win the ACC. However, an injury to quarterback Jordan Travis contributed to the team being left out of the 2024 College Football Playoff.

Now, in his fifth season as the head coach at Florida State, Norvell is looking to repeat that regular season success while making it to the CFP.

“I cannot wait to watch this team play, and I really am with everything that I have, just excited about the moment and the opportunity. I like this team. I like how this team has come together. I really do respect these young men for who they are and what they’re all about. It’s just like I told them, you do all the work and you build it up for — it’s so few games, but now you get to go put it on display,” Norvell said.

“There’s going to be great moments. There’s going to be challenging times in the course of every contest, but it’s that response. You can build confidence through the work that they’ve done and their preparation, but you get to go out there and execute it and that’s what we get to see come Saturday, and what a stage to be able to do it on.”

Mike Norvell ‘very confident’ in how FSU has prepared for Week 0 trip to Dublin

With the team’s Week 0 trip to Dublin around the corner, Mike Norvell shared that he’s very confident in the team’s preparation.

“It’s been probably a year and a half process to prepare everything. We’ve had multiple advanced trips, I got a chance to go out there over spring break to do some promos for the game, but also get a sense of the logistics of what that’s going to look like. A lot of research from your past coaches and teams that have been a part of it. You talk a lot with the games in Europe there in the NFL, we got a couple guys on staff that have been a part of that as well,” Norvell explained.

“So just trying to make sure that everything we do is going to put our players in a position to go be their best. There are some unique dynamics to this trip, but I feel really good about the team that we have. All the work that’s gone into that from the administration to our operations staff. I mean they’ve done a remarkable job and definitely feel very confident in how we’ll be able to transition over even though we’re having to go nine hours away, but I feel very confident in how smoothly that will transition.”