All offseason Jalen Tabor, who will now officially go by his childhood nickname “Teez” has been the talk of the SEC and the face of the Florida Gators football team. With first round pick Vernon Hargreaves III back in Tampa — collecting checks from the Buccaneers — Tabor was anointed the heir apparent to the throne as king of DBU.
Tabor was the only First Team All American; whisked around New York City all day for a media blitz. He’s charismatic, outspoken, unafraid of controversy and pretty good at this whole football thing.
“I get it,” junior cornerback Quincy Wilson admitted
Tabor is the most talked about and celebrated player the Florida Gators have but he’s not the only cornerback on Florida’s roster, although with the attention Tabor receives you might think that he plays defense on his own, covering all the receivers and tight ends, quite the feat, maybe not too much to ask from a kid who had the Superman logo tattooed on his chest before he finished high school.
“I don’t blame Jalen though. He’s done a great job at the University of Florida,” junior cornerback Duke Dawson said. “He’s made a lot of plays. I personally think that me and Quincy are being looked over. Both big, physical, great athletes and we’re both getting looked over.”
That’s an important distinction. By all accounts Tabor is a great teammate. He’ll tell you he believes he’s the best cornerback in the country, he even said it when he shared the field with Hargreaves the last two years, but being confident in himself doesn’t get in the way of being a teammate, especially to the guys in his positional meeting room. At the end of his media day in New York, Tabor was asked which player he though would surprise fans and media the most in 2016.
“I think Quincy Wilson is going to surprise a lot of people. I don’t think he gets the recognition he deserves,” Tabor said. “I think he’s going to surprise a lot of people because teams probably won’t throw my way and think, well, he’s a guy we can burn. He’s going to make people pay. I think he’s really underrated but everybody will see after this season.”
Wilson played in all 14 games last season, including with a sports hernia for more than a month at the end of the year. His seven pass breakups were third on the team, 29 tackles fourth among corners and his two interceptions were tied for second on the team.
“I feel like that’s kind of my fault too though,” Wilson says when asked why he doesn’t get more recognition. “I had chances to make more plays. I dropped a pick against ECU, could have had a pick against FSU.”
Still, when Florida faced Ole Miss, two weeks after the Rebels had taken down Alabama, it wasn’t Tabor or Hargreaves that drew the matchup against Laquan Treadwell, Ole Miss’ best receiver and one of the most talented pas catchers in the country. It was Wilson. Treadwell had his second lowest output in terms of receptions (5) and yards (42) of the season against that matchup.
“I remember we played Ole Miss out here in the Swamp, and I think Laquan Treadwell was one of the better receivers in college football, and obviously now going to the NFL,” Gators defensive coordinator Geoff Collins said. “Quincy was as dominant of a player throughout that game at whatever matchup he might have had.”
Dawson projects to be Florida’s starting nickel back, a spot that Brian Poole held down in 2015. He doesn’t play the same position most of the time, but he too has the potential to be a lockdown player at nickel. Most people around the country would probably have to look up Duke Dawson’s name to remember that he’s on the team.
“Me and Quincy, this whole summer put in the time before workouts, after workouts, to do what it takes to help us both help the team,” said Dawson. “Me and him connected more, even though we’re close, we connected more and that really helped.”
Florida’s depth at cornerback isn’t what it has been. Tabor, Wilson, and Dawson make up a supremely talented group, but they don’t have the kind of backups with experience to match what Florida has had in the past. The trio knows that they’ll be on the field a lot this year and all three of them agree on one thing: Florida’s secondary is more than just Jalen Tabor.
“I’ve been trying to tell them,” Wilson says with a smirk. “They’ll see.”