Dear Andy: Florida State’s portal magic, Anthony Richardson’s NFL draft decision

The transfer portal is open and NFL draft decisions are coming down daily — so naturally, you have questions …

Note: Submitted questions have been lightly edited for length and clarity. 

Do you think Anthony Richardson should have considered transferring to a better offense rather than declaring? Oregon, Ole Miss, UCLA or Wisconsin could have been good fits. — Jeremy

The Athletic draft guru Dane Brugler and I had a long discussion about this very topic on this week’s episode of  “Prospects To Pros” on “The Athletic Football Show” feed. Richardson’s situation absolutely fascinates both of us.

He has the size of an NFL tight end with the speed of an NFL corner and he probably has the strongest arm of any quarterback in the 2023 NFL draft. But if you were fielding a team (college or NFL), you’d easily choose Alabama’s Bryce Young, Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud and probably Kentucky’s Will Levis over Richardson.

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Because of those traits I mentioned above, Richardson probably will be selected somewhere in the first two rounds of the draft, and it’s possible he could go low in the first round. But combine those traits with one year of above-average production in college and someone is taking Richardson in the top 10. That’s a huge financial difference. Class of 2022 No. 10 pick Garrett Wilson received a four-year, $20.6 million deal (with a team option for a fifth year) that included a $12.1 million signing bonus. Class of 2022 No. 50 pick Tyquan Thornton signed a four-year, $7.1 million contract with a $2.3 million signing bonus.

There probably was serious money available if Richardson could have a more productive 2023 in college. Had he stayed at Florida and posted big numbers or gone elsewhere and lit up the scoreboard, he might have challenged USC’s Caleb Williams or North Carolina’s Drake Maye for the hearts and minds (and wallets) of NFL teams. But there also was a risk to staying at the college level.

Richardson couldn’t unseat Emory Jones as Florida’s starter in 2021, something that usually gets blamed on former Gators coach Dan Mullen. Enter new coach Billy Napier, who made clear on day one that Richardson was QB1. In Napier’s offense, Richardson completed 53.8 percent of his passes and averaged 7.8 yards per attempt, which placed him tied for No. 48 in the nation. He’d mix brilliant, NFL throws with curious short hops or overthrows. In Florida’s 45-38 loss to Florida State, Richardson completed five of his first seven throws for 151 yards and three touchdowns. He completed only four of his next 20 passes for 47 yards. That game felt like a microcosm of Richardson’s time at Florida. WOW, followed by HUH?

What might have happened if Richardson had stayed at Florida or gone elsewhere and posted similar or worse numbers? Then NFL personnel people — who at this point may still draft him fairly high because of his elite traits — might just say “he is who he is” and drop him down their boards. This would have been especially risky had Richardson transferred and then failed to produce at a high level in a third different offense.

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I’m very curious to see how Richardson emerges from the pre-draft process. Some NFL team is going to pick him with the hope that those traits will turn into production. The question is how high?

How do you fix the USC defense? Could they do it through the transfer portal for next season? — Zac

Personnel upgrades wouldn’t hurt — but they also aren’t guaranteed to solve the problem. Bring in someone who is to defensive tackles what Williams is to quarterbacks, and it will become more difficult to run and throw on USC. But even if the Trojans could upgrade every position group, they’d still have to address an underlying philosophical issue.

When I wrote a column following USC’s loss to Utah in the Pac-12 title game saying Lincoln Riley’s first USC team faced the same primary issue as all of his Oklahoma teams — shaky defense that ultimately lets down an elite offense — jilted Oklahoma fans loved it. Some USC fans argued that Riley needs more time to establish his program before making sweeping judgments. But more than a few USC fans looked at the season, looked at the 2017-21 Oklahoma seasons and noticed the same pattern. At a certain point, it’s not a personnel problem.

Riley has to decide how he feels about defense. That goes far beyond Alex Grinch’s place as defensive coordinator. It involves how the team trains in the offseason, how it handles spring practice and, most importantly, how it practices in season. Striking the correct balance between holding practices physical enough to allow the defense to practice its primary skill (tackling) and keeping players healthy during a long season is incredibly difficult. Georgia’s Kirby Smart and Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh have struck that balance in recent years, fielding defenses that seemed to get even more physical as their seasons progressed. The defense on Riley’s 2020 Oklahoma team closed its season strong, but all of the other ones were average to below average. (By the way, lest anyone think I’m picking on Riley, this conversation has gone on in Columbus about Ryan Day for more than a year.) If Riley wants to build a true national title contender, he’ll have to build a team that trains to have a tough, physical defense that gets ball carriers on the ground. And that might require some tradeoffs in training the offense. But those trade-offs would be worthwhile in the long run.

I do not think this is a hopeless case. Riley is incredibly intelligent and creative, and his success at this young age isn’t an accident. As I pointed out in that column Friday, Smart faced a similar philosophical quandary — except on offense. Georgia’s offense has evolved, and the Bulldogs are defending the 2021 national title as the No. 1 seed in this year’s College Football Playoff.

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Reaching a national title level still requires complementary football. A team must be capable of winning in multiple ways to win the title, and that will become even more important when the 12-team Playoff begins in 2024 because the gauntlet will reward the most stylistically flexible teams and punish the most stylistically rigid ones.

Riley will need to decide not to be so rigid because repeating the same thing will only bring more of the same results.

Andy, Florida State had the best season of the Big 3 in Florida (and beat both teams, one embarrassingly, the other thrillingly). However, the Seminoles are a distant third in recruiting. Of those teams, they have the most recent national championship in 2013 (Florida’s last in 2008, Miami’s in 2001). After doing a very good job within the portal the last couple of years, one would think that Florida State coach Mike Norvell would have a vision that would at least be competitive with UF and Miami for high school recruits. 

So why is FSU so far behind on the recruiting scoreboard? Miami has 11 ESPN300 recruits (two 5-stars), and UF has as many ESPN300 commits (16) as FSU has total commits (with six ESPN300, which ranks below Louisville, which has seven). Of note: The top two commits from FSU’s last class had one flip to Jackson State on signing day, and the other is now in the transfer portal. — Colin

At the moment, Florida State is behind Miami and Florida in the name, image and likeness world. Florida and its donor base always have had more money, while Miami and its donors have made a conscious effort in the past year to increase university spending on football and for donors to fund NIL opportunities for players. That has changed the math for high school recruiting among Sunshine State schools.

Where Florida State is not behind is on the field. The Seminoles were the best Power 5 program in Florida, and Norvell has done a tremendous job rebuilding the program after it was left a mess at the end of Jimbo Fisher’s tenure and driven further back during Willie Taggart’s time. Lane Kiffin has embraced the Portal King nickname, and Riley obviously remade USC’s team quickly through the portal, but there is a legitimate argument that Norvell has done better in the portal than any coach in the country.

Twice in two years, the Seminoles have picked up an edge rusher in the portal who developed into a coveted NFL draft prospect. Jermaine Johnson was a role player at Georgia who came to Florida State in 2021 to prove he could be an every-down player. He did more than that. He won the ACC’s defensive player of the year award and went to the Jets with the No. 26 pick in the NFL draft. While scouting Syracuse last season, Florida State defensive coordinator Adam Fuller noticed an incredible edge rusher playing for Albany. And when Jared Verse hit the portal, Florida State recruited him hard. Despite missing a game with an injury, Verse finished second in the ACC in tackles for loss with 14.5. Verse has yet to declare for the draft, but Brugler is predicting Verse will be a first-rounder if he does.

Meanwhile, Norvell and his staff added critical players through the portal such as safety Jammie Robinson (South Carolina), defensive tackle Fabian Lovett (Mississippi State), tailback Trey Benson (Oregon) and receiver Johnny Wilson (Arizona State). And while Norvell’s staff didn’t bring in quarterback Jordan Travis — Taggart did sign a QB! — Travis started his career at Louisville but wound up Florida State’s most important player.

It’s possible Florida State could build a collective that can compete with the ones at Miami and Florida in terms of attracting top high school prospects. But even if that remains difficult, Norvell seems quite capable of building a model that takes advantage of his staff’s portal evaluation skills and allows him to continue to field a competitive roster. And if Mario Cristobal and Napier aren’t careful, Norvell might use that model to keep beating them. Because there aren’t many coaches who have used the portal better.

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Should NIL money have a per-player cap? I don’t care that much about the arms race between teams, but it seems strange that a QB could become a millionaire while the O-line receives almost nothing.

In my mind, players should be limited to making around $100,000 per year. Then, if a booster/business wants to pay $250,000, they would need to spread $150,000 to other players besides the top one or two guys. — Kevin

Kevin would quickly run afoul of the Sherman Antitrust Act. It’s illegal in this country for a group of competing entities to collude to cap the compensation of people in a particular labor market.

Apple and Google can’t get together and decide to place a cap on what they’ll pay engineers. In fact, Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe were accused of doing just that several years ago. Plaintiffs alleged that the companies had a loose “no-poaching” agreement that effectively suppressed salaries in that market. Before the case could go to trial, the companies paid a combined $415 million to settle the case.

I think people get confused about this because they see salary caps in the NFL and NBA and wonder why college football can’t do the same thing. The salary caps in those leagues are collectively bargained by the teams (working through the league) and the players (working through the players’ associations). Patrick Mahomes can’t sue the Chiefs for paying him below market value because as a member of the players’ association, he effectively agreed to the terms of the CBA.

It could work that way in college, as well, but schools would have to collectively bargain those terms with the athletes, and that is much trickier in an enterprise that includes hundreds of public institutions spread across 50 states — some of which have wildly different employment laws.

It’s not an impossible task. One of the more interesting ideas I’ve heard came from an athletic director who suggested athletes become employees of conferences, which are private entities and which would consolidate the jurisdiction for each collective bargaining agreement to a single state. That would allow leagues to negotiate with the athletes or their representatives and come to a compromise that both groups consider fair. They also could negotiate new rules to control player movement or anything else they’d like to address.

I do think it will go this way eventually. The name, image and likeness market is skewed because it is making up for the schools’ inability — thanks to rules agreed upon by the schools that would almost certainly be struck down if challenged in the court system — to pay the players for their value as players. Give the schools that capability and the NIL market would function as originally intended. In the pro leagues, NIL money allows Nike and Sprite to make LeBron James whole for the value that the Lakers aren’t allowed to pay him.

The Supreme Court’s 9-0 judgment in NCAA v. Alston, a narrowly focused case involving rules that capped what schools could provide athletes from an educational standpoint, has school and conference officials scared that almost any NCAA rule brought before the federal court system will be deemed to violate antitrust law. So they’re not going to be colluding to cap NIL money anytime soon.

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Until the schools are ready to collectively bargain, no one — not Kevin, not the AD at State U and not the chancellor at Tech U — will get to decide how much each player can makes. The market will decide that.

A Random Ranking

Reader Henry wants me to rank the non-bulldog dogs in college football. I’m not sure if Henry wants me to rank individual canines (live mascots) or team nicknames, so let’s do the individual pooches themselves.

Non-bulldog live mascots:

1. Smokey, Tennessee (Bluetick coonhound)

2. Tuffy, NC State (Tamaskan)

3. Reveille, Texas A&M (Collie)

4. Jonathan, Connecticut (Siberian husky)

5. Dubs, Washington (Alaskan malamute)

6. Diesel, Northern Illinois (Siberian husky)

7. Blitz, Wofford (Boston terrier)

8. Scotty, Carnegie Mellon (Scottish terrier)

9. Zeke the Wonder Dog, Michigan State (Yellow lab)

10. Goldie, Tulsa (Golden retriever)

(Top photo of Florida’s Caleb Douglas and Florida State’s Greedy Vance and Jarques McClellion: Melina Myers / USA Today)