Florida State’s preseason award haul picked up another notable entry on Tuesday, with running backs Ousmane Kromah and Quintrevion Wisner both landing on the 2026 Doak Walker Award watch list.
That puts the Seminoles in a small club. Florida State is one of just seven schools overall - and one of only two ACC teams - with multiple players on the list. Through this point in preseason recognition, only four Florida State players have been mentioned, with receiver Duce Robinson drawing most of the attention.
Kromah enters the season with plenty of buzz after a freshman year that flashed more than it finished. He ran for 408 yards without a touchdown last season, though he did score once as a receiver and totaled 147 receiving yards.
His biggest rushing day came against Virginia, when he reached 63 yards. Since then, he has reportedly trimmed down over the spring and summer and put together a strong fall camp.
Florida State expects him to take on the lead-back role this year.
The profile behind Kromah is easy to see. The 6-foot-1, 216-pound back was a consensus four-star recruit, ranked among the top 100 prospects nationally and tabbed by On3 as the No. 4 running back in the country.
ESPN300 placed him at No. 139.
He also earned 6A Player of the Year honors in Georgia after a senior season that featured 1,356 rushing yards, 15 rushing touchdowns, 741 receiving yards and eight more scores. Mike Norvell beat out Georgia, Auburn and Tennessee to land him.
Wisner’s path to Florida State comes with a different kind of résumé. In 2024, he led Texas with 1,064 rushing yards and scored five times, posting four 100-yard games and topping out at 186 yards in a win over Texas A&M. But his postseason was quiet, with fewer than 50 rushing yards in each playoff game against Arizona State and Ohio State, and an average of under three yards per carry in those two contests.
His production dipped last season. Wisner rushed for 597 yards and three touchdowns, missing four games along the way, including the Cheez-It Bowl against Michigan. He still managed 155 rushing yards in another win over Texas A&M before sitting out the bowl.
Florida State will try to build around that backfield talent behind an offensive line that has been reshaped but still brings experience, with 107 combined starts. Ashton Daniels is part of that backfield mix as well.
For Norvell, the challenge is clear: find the right answers and keep defenses guessing. Florida State needs the kind of play calls that can spring Kromah and Wisner for chunk gains and keep the offense from getting stuck in one gear.
If that happens, the Seminoles have a chance to put together a respectable season. If it doesn’t, the offense could become too predictable to carry the team forward.
In Other News...
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Florida State opened 2025 on the outside of the AP preseason Top 25 again, a familiar and frustrating place for a program that has spent much of the Mike Norvell era trying to climb back into national relevance. It is the fifth time in seven years under Norvell that the Seminoles have been left out of the poll, a reminder that last years struggles and a modest transfer portal haul have not yet changed the bigger perception around the program.
The path back will not be easy, either. Florida States schedule includes four ranked opponents, with Miami, SMU, Louisville and Alabama all waiting to test whether the Seminoles are ready to rejoin the conversation. Norvell enters the season with the pressure already building, and how this team handles the early months could determine far more than just its place in the rankings. [Read more 🡒]
Florida States Biggest 2026 Question Is All About Where The Money Went
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The question now is whether the most important spot on the field got enough of that attention. The Athletics offseason quarterback rankings suggested Florida State may not have landed at the same level at quarterback as some of its other additions, leaving Ashton Daniels in a less favorable tier than several of the passers brought in elsewhere. For a program trying to justify both its spending and its direction, that is the kind of mismatch that can loom over an entire season. [Read more 🡒]