Florida coach Mike Norvell described his team as “sick to the stomach” after losing to FCS Jacksonville State and vowed his players would not leave the season against this desperate loss.
During his Monday press conference with media in Tallahassee, a fired Norvell again took full responsibility for FSU’s first FCS loss in school history, but said it was an educational moment. which they would learn as they prepared to open the ACC game at Wake Forest on Saturday.
“This football team is not going to quit smoking,” Norvell said. “We have to build and improve, and we will. That will be something we look back on. No one wants to have the experience, no one wants to have the feelings, but it’s our chance to respond to it, and it’s our chance to go improving. That’s why last night we didn’t just sit and drag our heads. Was anyone happy? No, they were sick to their stomachs so it happened on Saturday night., and go to work. “
Saturday night, the state of Florida led the state of Jacksonville 17-14 with six seconds left. Instead of playing to impede the defense, the Seminoles wanted to hurry to four and make sure their defensive backs were in a position to keep all routes in front. The Seminoles had two players in position to enter after Damond Philyaw-Johnson caught the ball on the 21-yard line, but both failed.
“I think there was a shock factor that just hit, and there were some guys who froze at the time,” Norvell said. “Why is this happening? I’m not sure, but guys need to be able to overcome them in these situations when they’re full of pressure.
“At the moment, you have your reasons for doing things. We’re not done and obviously the outcome of the game can’t happen. As a coaching staff, we take responsibility for what happened. That’s our thing. We have to to do well. It’s sick of having to live with him. “
In his first comments from the game, Florida State defensive coordinator Adam Fuller said he would not have made a different decision on the game call, even if there were less than 6 seconds on the clock.
“Always try to make that decision: will it be more than a play of chunks with a timeout to tie a field goal or will it be a shot in the end zone?” Fuller said. “In my opinion, he can’t get to the end zone if we rush to four. We’ll get there before he can get the ball out to 60 yards. So let’s hurry four men, let’s push, we support the guys so they’ll see the ball thrown , they will overlap it with safety and put themselves in position, they will lower the ball. That is what it became. “
Norvell noted that the Seminoles lost their two games this season in the final play, including Notre Dame in overtime in week 1. But the key difference is that, after facing the Irish, the The state of Florida was highly praised for its efforts. Losing to an FCS program just can’t happen.
“We have to go out to play coach and run the way we train,” Norvell said. “And if we do that, I won’t give a shit to who we play. It won’t matter. But obviously that doesn’t happen, and we’re not doing it for 60 minutes. The first week, we lost a game that I think we should have won. same happened Saturday night.The first week, people are glad we played hard.Well, that will be the standard.We will play hard and when bad things happen we need to be able to rely on the training of what we do 365 days a week of the year so that we cannot have these distractions, setbacks or mistakes at the time when things get tough ”.