Since 1995 the Maxwell Football club has presented the player that they judge to be the best defensive player in of the year the Chuck Bednairk Award.
A preseason list of the potential best defensive player in college football would be incomplete without Vernon Hargreaves. The Maxwell Football Club knows this and they didn’t leave him off.
Hargreaves has racked up more than and handful of postseason and preseason accolades since a stellar rookie campaign, so this distinction is not new to him. Hargreaves enters his sophomore season with more expectations than any sophomore in recent memory but the talent to achieve and exceed those expectations.
Hargreaves was not alone on the list. Joining him was another obvious choice in BUCK linebacker Dante Fowler Jr.
Fowler enters his junior season as Florida’s biggest pass rushing threat and the most recognizable next to Hargreaves.
Florida quarterback Jeff Driskel was also given a national honor by being named to the Maxwell Award watch list. Driskel was one of 74 players to be named to the award list that goes out annually to the college player of the year as voted on by the Maxwell Football Club.
Danny Wuerffel (1996) and Tim Tebow (2007-08) are the only Gators who have won the award previously.
The Bednairk Award has been given out 19 times but a Gator has never received the award. The complete list featured 76 student-athletes, which will be cut down to semi-finalists on November 3, before a three-person finalists list is announced on November 24.
Both Awards will be officially decided on and handed out at the Home Depot College Football Awards Show on December 11.