Norvell earns a 5.0 hot seat grade before SMU
CBS Sports handed Mike Norvell a maximum hot-seat rating heading into Monday's home date with No. 19 SMU, the clearest sign yet that beating New Mexico State bought him little patience.
Norvell's 5.0 hot seat grade arrives with a ranked team on the schedule
Norvell spent the week repeating the word he used right after the opener. "All the issues were correctable issues," he told reporters, per Tomahawk Nation, even with tape showing an offensive line that let Ashton Daniels hold the ball too long on multiple snaps in his Florida State debut — 202 yards, a touchdown, and his first interception in a Seminoles uniform. Defensive coordinator Tony White traced New Mexico State's touchdowns to busted communication rather than a talent gap: "anytime that it's miscommunication, it's us." Florida State will be without leading receiver D. Carter, out with a back injury for an undetermined stretch, according to Covers' aggregated injury log.
The stakes around fixing it got sharper this week. CBS Sports' John Talty assigned Norvell the maximum 5.0 hot-seat rating on his site's coaching survey, calling Monday's game against No. 19 SMU one of the results that could decide whether Norvell survives the season or gets, in Talty's phrase, run out of Tallahassee — the price of back-to-back losing seasons, 2-10 in 2024 and 5-7 in 2025, with no bowl trip in either.
Norvell isn't hiding from it. "I love coaching in these games where you got a lot of respect for the people that you're going against, but it's one that we're going to be ready for," he said this week, per Yahoo Sports, before adding: "This is going to be a championship-caliber game. SMU has shown that these last few years. They've competed at a really high level."
The Florida loss finally got its answer: Florida State 34, New Mexico State 17
Last season ended with a 40-21 loss at Florida on November 29, capping a 5-7 year in which the Seminoles dropped three of their last four. That was the backdrop walking into the opener, and Florida State answered it by never trailing, beating New Mexico State 34-17. Ousmane Kromah did the finishing work, breaking off a 52-yard run on his way to 115 yards on 14 carries and the clinching 1-yard score with 4:01 left, but Samuel Singleton Jr. was the best player on the field — 164 yards from scrimmage and 2 touchdowns, one on the ground and one on a throw from Daniels, good enough that FSUFootball's own account handed him the program's first "rock break" of the season.
New Mexico State34-17
Rushing TD & Receiving TD gets Samuel Singleton Jr the first rock break of the year 🪨 #NoleFamily
It wasn't clean getting there. New Mexico State converted 6 of 7 third downs at one stretch and hung around into the third quarter on the strength of it, and a dropped Florida State pick-six turned into an Aggies touchdown drive that kept the margin honest longer than the final score suggests. Whatever the answer says about November, it says the Seminoles opened the new season the way a favorite is supposed to — up 17, occasionally sloppy, but never actually threatened.
The Castellanos saga gets its last line: backup at Texas Tech
Thomas Castellanos, the transfer quarterback who authored Florida State's 2025 upset of Alabama in Tallahassee, has resurfaced at Texas Tech, where Brett McMurphy reported he will compete for a backup role behind Red Raiders starter Will Hammond. It closes 6 weeks that started August 21, when On3's Pete Nakos reported Castellanos had entered the transfer portal, ran through an August 10 lawsuit filed in South Carolina, and ended with a court-granted fifth year of eligibility that let him commit to Texas Tech on August 26, per Bleacher Report. In his lone season at FSU in 2025 he threw for 2,760 yards and 15 touchdowns and ran for 557 yards and 9 more scores — the kind of two-way production Seminoles fans don't forget just because he's now clipboard depth in Lubbock.
The exit was messier than a typical portal move. His fifth-year fight became one of the test cases for the NCAA's new age-based eligibility model, and the injunction that won it slots him in as a backup, not a starter. Florida State had already turned the page before he found a new address, handing the job in fall camp to Stanford and Auburn transfer Ashton Daniels, who made his first start in the season-opening win over New Mexico State.
A ranked visitor, a returning 3,641-yard passer, and a coach who says he loves this spot
SMU comes in 0-0 this season but arrives ranked No. 19, last seen beating Arizona 24-19 in last season's Holiday Bowl, per the Dallas Morning News. Quarterback Kevin Jennings is back after throwing for 3,641 yards and 26 touchdowns in 2025, and Norvell's own scouting report on Rhett Lashlee's offense doubles as a warning: the SMU coach likes to attack through the run, the pass and multiple tight ends depending on what he sees on tape.
The line opened with Florida State as a 2.5-point underdog at home, and the total was set at 53.5 — a middling number for a game both coaches are calling something bigger than a Week 2 tune-up. It kicks off Monday night vs. SMU at Doak Campbell Stadium, with Norvell having already said the quiet part out loud: "This is going to be a championship-caliber game."