The Florida State Seminoles enter the midpoint of summer recruiting considerably off their average pace on the trail. Just a year ago the FSU staff was heading into the dead period, getting ready for Saturday Night Live, knocking on the door of a top five, potentially top three class. Even hitting No. 1 overall during the spring of 2018.

Then 5-7 happened and this recruiting cycle has a different feel to it.

FSU currently has the 17th ranked 2020 class in the country and 4th in the ACC. FSU finished 2019 with the 19th ranked class, and in 2018 Willie Taggart salvaged an 11th ranked class in the transition from Jimbo Fisher. Let’s be clear; these aren’t rankings that FSU fans have become accustomed to seeing over the last decade.

On top of that, FSU is struggling to gain traction with the top recruits in the state of Florida. which we talked about it in depth earlier this year (LINK). They do not have any commitments from the top ten recruits in the state and the ‘Noles only have two commitments in the state’s top twenty (No. 18 & 19). The staff still has a shot at landing a few more, in the 10-20 range (the top ten in the state are all committed elsewhere already).

Florida State’s big recruiting event of the summer will be Saturday Night Live on July 27. Recruiting will likely get a slight bump if things go well at SNL, but FSU will probably still be outside of the top 10 entering the season.

Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts for FSU this summer. It will take a turnaround on the field this season to see better results on the recruiting trail.