Florida’s February signing day was not as exciting as the one back in December.
Seven weeks ago, Billy Napier managed to sign three players in or just outside the top 100. He broke the IMG curse in the process, landing high 4-star safety Kamari Wilson. The top signee yesterday was Trevor Etienne, the No. 186 player in the 247 Sports Composite.
As it stands the morning after NSD, UF is 19th in the Composite rankings. It’s the lowest since Jim McElwain’s transitional class finished 21st in 2015.
It is the age of transfers, however, with the new one-time transfer rule the culmination of years of increasingly easy-to-get transfer waivers. The scouts at 247 have been re-ranking at least some transfers for years now — the first Gator to be reevaluated was Jonathan Greenard getting a bump up from a low 3-star to a 4-star rating upon leaving Louisville — and this year they’ve created a new ranking that accounts for all transfers.
I like the way they did it, as recruiting high school and JUCO players is a different skill that is covered under different rules than attracting transfers. They should be kept separate if you want to see them individually, but the rate of transfers is getting high enough that there should be another ranking that accounts for transfers to cover all incoming talent.
In the combined recruit and transfer ratings, UF moves up to 17th. In both rankings, the Gators are just ahead of FSU, which is a vote of confidence in Napier in relation to Mike Norvell. Napier almost cleared the decks of commitments upon arrival and still ended up essentially tied with a rival head coach who’s been trying to build something for a couple of years now.
It’s important to consider context with transitional classes more than any others for the obvious reason that a new head coach has an impossibly short timeline to evaluate talent, build relationships, and try to close on recruitments. Napier in particular chose the uncommon strategy of not pulling out all the stops to try to keep pre-existing commits around. Letting so many go was defensible if you don’t believe in Dan Mullen’s recruiting acumen, and not many do at this point, but it set back the quantity portion of the equation even further.
Looking at the last five Florida transitional classes, Napier has signed the fewest recruits with an asterisk. Urban Meyer signed 18 players in 2005. Will Muschamp signed 19 in 2011. Mullen also ended up with 19 after Randy Russell was medically disqualified shortly after enrolling in January. Jim McElwain ended up with 20 after one signee didn’t qualify.
Napier is sitting on 17 at present, but UF is a finalist for WR/TE Arlis Boardingham. He didn’t sign yesterday and could make an 18th prospect for the class.
On top of the signings, however, Napier has brought in five transfers with immediate eligibility. That’s the most of any Florida coach, more than McElwain’s four (Mason Halter, Joshua Grady, Anthony Harrell, T.J. McCoy) and Mullen’s three (Van Jefferson, Trevon Grimes, Adam Shuler).
To add it up, McElwain’s 24 new eligible players is the most in any of these transitional years. Napier is tied with Mullen for second at 22, while Muschamp had 19 and Meyer had 18. If Boardingham becomes a Gator, then Napier will stand alone in second place.
There is reason to think that Napier won’t necessarily be done for the cycle after Boardingham makes his decision, however. The transfer portal is likely to heat back up in the April-June time frame as players make some choices about their futures after spring practice. While a lot of them will be guys who don’t like how far down the depth chart they are, there could be some potential immediate contributors who want to finish out their degrees this semester before leaving.
Florida has its normal allotment of 25 initial counters to use on new scholarship signees and transfers. Also due to a new rule, it gets up to seven additional initial counters to replace transfers who entered the portal on or after December 15. Three former Gators did so (Mohamoud Diabate, Kemore Gamble, Ty’Ron Hopper), so the potential number is at least as high as 28. If some current UF players leave after spring, that’d push the limit up higher.
There still is the 85-scholarship cap to worry about, and players using their Covid exceptions to get an extra year of eligibility currently do count against the 85 where they didn’t a year ago. The NCAA could still change the accounting to exclude them again, but it hasn’t yet. UF has four players — Ventrell Miller, Trey Dean, Amari Burney, and Jordan Pouncey — who are using their waivers to play this year.
Florida is already over the 85 cap right now, so it’ll have to see some players head out before the start of preseason practice just to get on the right side of the rules. Any additional newcomers, whether Boardingham or future transfers, would only make that need for attrition creep upwards.
Still, it wouldn’t take much for Napier to match or overtake McElwain for most new players brought in during a transitional year. Mac’s total was also inflated a bit with Grady and Harrell being grad transfers who had only one year of eligibility left and who played very minor roles on the field. If you set those two aside, there’s a three-way tie between Mac, Mullen, and Napier.
As for the 2022 signing class itself, its low rating by Florida’s standards is in part an artifact of it being small and part from some of the players in it. It includes a kicker and a primarily blocking tight end, and those kinds of players almost never get a rating above a low 3-star. It also includes a project quarterback who is a former baseball player who’s only played QB for two years.
There also are guys like offensive lineman Jalen Farmer, a 3-star Consensus prospect who Alabama made a late run at. WR Caleb Douglas is someone UF beat out LSU for, and he was committed to USC before that. Not all 3-stars are blocking tight ends or projects.
There is also DE Andrew Savaiinaea from the greater Seattle area who didn’t even get an offer from Washington. This, despite his proximity to the school, an uncle of his having played offensive line for the Huskies, and the relative lack of production of good D-linemen on the west coast. He may turn out to be a terrific player, but it goes to show that not all the sub-blue chip players are guys that UF beat out SEC powers for.
The goal for any transitional class is simply to not be a disaster. This one doesn’t look like one, but we’re not even to spring practice yet. Muschamp lost two players to transfer from his transitional class within months of signing day, and Mullen had to dismiss a player over the ensuing summer. It’ll be years before we can adequately judge the group, and again, there probably are more additions to come.
It may sound like a low bar, but that’s the reality of the situation. It’s not likely that this class will do much to close the gap with the SEC’s powers. Texas A&M just signed the highest-rated class in 247 Composite history. No. 2 Alabama’s ’22 class actually has a slightly higher average player rank, it just had four fewer players in it. Georgia signed as many 5-star recruits this year (five) as Florida has since 2014.
The time for Napier to show the recruiting value of the army he’s built is this calendar year, leading up to signing the 2023 class. This year’s group simply needs to not be a boat anchor dragging behind the program. McElwain and Mullen had early success in part because their transitional classes, while not outstanding, had a good number of contributors in them. Muschamp took a dive in 2013 and couldn’t recover the next year in no small part because his transitional class didn’t.
It’d be easy to look at Napier’s introductory press conference comments downplaying the December signing day and then see 17 signees right now and think he’s not building the roster with real urgency. Throw in the five transfers, only one of whom (O’Cyrus Torrence) is likely to be a one-and-done given his future pro prospects, and you see there has been a lot of roster action. Then add in the likely spring portal period, as Napier called it in his presser yesterday, and he’ll probably pass up McElwain for most new players in a transitional year.
The Gators of 2022 will have plenty of new faces everywhere. While Napier is trying to manage expectations, he’s also performing a major roster overhaul with a quickness.