Redemption Arc: Why Florida State's mental toughness looms over 2025 season

Coming off of a undefeated regular season and ACC Championship in 2023, Florida State fell flat on its face in 2024. The Seminoles sputtered to a 2-10 record last season after entering the preseason as the No. 10 team in the AP poll.

Now entering coach Mike Norvell‘s sixth year at the helm, the pressure is on to see how the team responds. Norvell has two double-digit win seasons in his tenure in Tallahassee but also three losing seasons.

But college football analyst Josh Pate argued they can’t let themselves be discouraged if things don’t go their way in Week 1. The Seminoles open things up against Alabama and are 13.5-point underdogs according to FanDuel.

“They’ve got to face Bama out the gate. I don’t like the matchup,” Pate said on Josh Pate’s College Football Show. “I hope Mike Norvell was right in what he said to us when we went down there in the spring, because he was on the show and he said, ‘I think we made the right moves. I think we got the right people in the building.’ And I believe that he believes that. He wasn’t BS’ing us. But then, you’ve got to play the games. If you’re competitive with Bama – win or loss, if you’re competitive – everyone believes.

“But after last year, a million dollar question around there is how mentally tough is Florida State football? And that’s up to Mike Norvell and his staff, but ultimately, it’s up to those players. Because if it doesn’t go your way in Week 1, you’ve got 11 more of them. And you died as a team last year, and you can’t have that happen two years in a row. So the consistency thing, that’s the big question there.”

At least after the game against the Crimson Tide, Florida State gets a couple easy nonconference opponents in East Texas A&M and Kent State before entering ACC play. But games against Miami, Clemson and Florida still loom.

The Seminoles overhauled their roster in the offseason, bringing in 23 transfers while 31 players departed from the program. One of their biggest additions was quarterback Thomas Castellanos, a dual-threat player from Boston College who rushed for more than 1,000 yards during the 2023 season.

But while Florida State might have added plenty of talent, it takes more than that to get to the top. To Pate, whether that talent can also withstand the challenges and adversity that come with a grueling college football calendar will make or break the Seminoles’ season.