Mike Norvell responds to reports Florida State will hire Gus Malzahn as offensive coordinator

News broke Saturday that Central Florida head coach Gus Malzahn would be resigning in favor of becoming the next offensive coordinator at Florida State.

Following the Seminoles’ season-ending 31-11 loss to rival Florida later Saturday evening, FSU head coach Mike Norvell was asked about the reported addition of the former UCF and Auburn head coach as Florida State’s new play-caller.

While there are still clerical issues to attend to before any formal announcement could be made, Norvell confirmed the ‘Noles have “identified” the team’s next offensive coordinator, even double-checking with a FSU official at the podium to make sure nothing had changed during Saturday’s season-finale.

“I know we’ve identified our offensive coordinator and very excited about who that will be,” Norvell said. “There are still some things we have to finalize in the hiring process before I can comment. Is that right? I’m excited about who we’ve identified though.”

Florida State (2-10, 1-7 ACC) finished regular season ranked last in the ACC in total offense and scoring, averaging 270.3 yards and 15.4 points per game, respectively. The Seminoles moved on from former OC Alex Atkins and other offensive staffers following a blowout loss to Notre Dame.

Following his 2020 firing at Auburn after eight years on the Plains, Malzahn landed at UCF in 2021 and found immediate success. The Knights finished with nine wins in each of his first two seasons before making the leap to the Big 12, where UCF struggled through a 10-15 record and 5-13 in league play.

Now, he’s reuniting with Norvell. The two worked together at Tulsa after Malzahn said he “discovered” Norvell through their connection with Springdale High School in Arkansas. Norvell started as a graduate assistant at Tulsa and later worked his way up the coaching ranks before being named head coach at Memphis in 2016 and later at Florida State in 2020.

Mike Norvell promises ‘immediate, fast fix’ for FSU

After the game, Norvell promised that there would be a fast and immediate fix for the football program and that the 2025 season wouldn’t be anything like what happened this year.

“Awful season,” Mike Norvell said. “That’s the best way I can put it. Very disappointing that we performed the way we did. A lot of circumstances that have shown up. Our fair share of adversity and some things that were outside of our control. Some things that we did control. We had a lot of young players that got opportunities and had to kind of get thrown into it before maybe their time. But with each of those reps they got, it’s an opportunity to grow, opportunity to build upon it. Just like I told the team there in the locker room, this is getting fixed. It’s going to be an immediate, fast fix.”

Florida State came into the season ranked 10th in the country by the AP Poll. However, things quickly went sideways for the Seminoles and Mike Norvell wasn’t able to turn things around. That 2-10 finish ended up being the worst since 1974 when the Seminoles were 1-11.

Dan Morrison and Nick Schultz contributed to this report.