Daniels debuts, Florida State tops New Mexico State 34-17
Ashton Daniels threw for 202 yards and scored twice in his Florida State debut, and Sebastian Janikowski's No. 38 went up in the rafters before the Seminoles ever snapped it.
Daniels answers the job with a debut to match the ceremony
The pomp came first. Florida State retired Sebastian Janikowski's No. 38 before kickoff, the two-time Lou Groza winner becoming the 13th player in program history to have his number hung in the rafters, joining Deion Sanders, Jameis Winston and Charlie Ward, per Yahoo Sports and On3's coverage of the ceremony. It turned what should have been a lopsided Week 0 game into an actual occasion at Doak, and Ashton Daniels — handed the honor of breaking fall camp's ceremonial rock a day earlier, per 247Sports — took the first snap of his FSU career in front of it.
𝗗𝗔𝗡𝗜𝗘𝗟𝗦 𝗧𝗔𝗞𝗘𝗦 𝗜𝗧 𝗜𝗡! Ashton Daniels rushes right for four yards for the TOUCHDOWN! Q2: 14:15 | FSU 10, NMST 0 #NoleFamily t.co/C0pE5qU7sx
He mostly delivered on it. Daniels went 17 of 27 for 202 yards with a touchdown pass to Samuel Singleton Jr., added a rushing score of his own, and did it after Mike Norvell spent the back half of camp saying things like "understanding where to go, the things of what to do, how he's been able to perform — I think he's done a really good job," following FSU's second scrimmage, per 247Sports. The rough patch was real too: an interception in the first half drew boos from the home crowd, per ChrisVannini's live coverage of the game, and New Mexico State cashed it in for a touchdown that briefly made this closer than a 31.5-point favorite is supposed to allow.
Auburn-via-Stanford transfer, ceremonial rock-breaker, first started at Doak with a legend's jersey retiring above him — that is about as clean a debut narrative as a fall camp produces, boos and all.
The Swamp 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, the finish to a 5-7 year that saw the Seminoles drop three of their last four. That was the backdrop going into Saturday night, and Florida State answered it by never trailing, beating New Mexico State 34-17 behind a game that got away from tidy for stretches before FSU pulled clear late.
𝐊𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐀𝐇 𝐖𝐀𝐋𝐊𝐒 𝐈𝐓 𝐈𝐍! Ousmane Kromah scores on a 1yd TOUCHDOWN run Kromah has 14 carries for 115 yds tonight Q4: 3:55 | FSU 34, NMST 17 #NoleFamily t.co/7Znnu4EhFz
Ousmane Kromah did the finishing work, breaking off a 52-yard run on his way to 115 yards on 14 carries and the clinching one-yard score with 4:01 left, but Samuel Singleton Jr. was the best player on the field — 164 yards from scrimmage and two touchdowns, one rushing and one on the throw from Daniels, per SI's postgame breakdown. It wasn't clean: New Mexico State converted 6 of 7 third downs at one stretch and hung around into the third quarter on the strength of it, per ChrisVannini's wire updates, and a dropped FSU 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 a new season the way a favorite is supposed to — up 17, occasionally sloppy, but never actually threatened.
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The other offseason storyline closed out officially on Saturday: Texas Tech announced the addition of Castellanos, who will compete for a backup role behind starter Will Hammond rather than any kind of quarterback controversy, per Brett McMurphy's reporting and our own coverage. It's a quieter ending than the South Carolina lawsuit and the fifth-year injunction that got him there, and it leaves Florida State with the room it built around Daniels instead of the one it lost.
None of that lifts the pressure sitting on Mike Norvell, who landed on Bruce Feldman's preseason hot-seat rankings next to names like Bill Belichick and Lincoln Riley, a list our desk covered in Mike Norvell's Florida State Hot Seat Heats Up Before 2026 before a snap had been played. A win over a 31.5-point underdog doesn't change that calculus much, especially with an offensive line that let Daniels get hit far more than a coach wants to see in Week 0. Camp's other bad news is still there too: receiver D. Carter is out with a back injury and set to miss an undetermined length of time, per Covers' aggregated injury log, reported last week.
A 1-0 start is a 1-0 start, but nobody in Tallahassee is pretending the seat cooled off because of it.
A ranked SMU comes to Doak for a Monday night litmus test
Florida State gets a real measuring stick next, on September 7 vs. SMU — a Mustangs team that opens the season ranked 19th in the AP poll and picked second in the ACC preseason media poll behind Miami, returning quarterback Kevin Jennings for a third year as starter after he threw for 3,641 yards and 26 touchdowns a season ago, per preseason previews circulating this month. SMU's own record still reads 0-0, but the résumé behind it — an American Conference title, an ACC title-game trip, a Playoff berth — is exactly the kind of program that turns a Week 1 line into a real test.
The line opened with SMU favored by 2.5 and the total set at 53.5, a number that reads as roughly a coin flip on a night the Seminoles will need a cleaner performance than the one that got them past New Mexico State. Doak Campbell Stadium gets to find out fast whether Ashton Daniels' debut was the floor or the ceiling.