Here are a few quick hitters in advance of the debut of the 2026 Florida Gators football season.
Getting in gear
If your car is getting bad gas mileage, there are a few things you can do to get that number up. You can get a tune up, or put some additives in the tank to clean the engine, or get differently sized tires.
Also, you could take off the parking brake while you drive.
I think Florida has a higher floor this season versus many past ones because there isn’t an obvious strategic flaw holding the team back right now. Maybe such a flaw will become apparent, but I don’t see one yet.
The Gators were held back in recent years by Billy Napier’s stubborn resistance to giving up play calling on offense and iffy defensive coordinator hires. On the latter point, he hired two guys not ready for the chair and then brought in an old veteran who had some legit insights in his career (about simulated pressures and so-called “creepers”) but ultimately played too much bend-but-don’t-break. Under Dan Mullen, Todd Grantham was a liability every year except the one when he brought his former player Jonathan Greenard from Louisville to provide a menace off the edge.
The most recent fearsome Florida DC? Geoff Collins, who last touched the Swamp sideline a literal decade ago. And for the two coaching terms before Mullen, Florida was plagued by conservative and at times outdated offensive coordinators.
Now? Jon Sumrall is one of the best defensive minds in the game, and Brad White has experience faithfully implementing the vision of a defensive head coach. Buster Faulkner was the most sought-after offensive coordinator on the market.
UF may finally have gotten out of its own way. We won’t know for sure until we see some product on the field, but nothing about this staff screams that they will be holding themselves back in some strategic way.
Blast from the past
FAU head coach Zach Kittley is unusual among FBS head coaches because he still likes to go fast. He learned uptempo Air Raid offense from working with Kliff Kingsbury at Texas Tech.
Fast offense had a moment in the mid-to-late 2000s, with the ascendance of guys like Chip Kelly and Gus Malzahn. The latter literally wrote the book on Hurry-Up No-Huddle offense. Adoption wasn’t as universal as spread offense, but you saw it plenty around the country as the years went on.
It began to fade about a decade later. Kelly himself mostly quit on it after going to the NFL. Power teams these days shy away from fast tempo because making a deep playoff run means playing two or three more games than previously, so they’re conscious about wear and tear.
Kittley’s FAU doesn’t need to worry about maybe having to play 16 games, so he cranks up the speed. UF, in its first year of a new defensive staff and scheme, may be caught off guard at times on Saturday by tempo from the Owls, who are in their second year of going fast.
FAU also managed to hold onto fifth-year quarterback Caden Veltkamp, who threw for 3,100 yards two years ago at Western Kentucky and over 3,600 in Boca last year. Of course, the Air Raid does a lot of short and run-replacement throws, so those 3,600 yards came on a whopping 515 attempts — an okay but not great 7.1 per pass. He also won the national challenge for most picks last year with 17, though that’s only an interception rate of 3.3% on that many throws.
Florida has a massive talent advantage and should win by a comfortable margin in the end, even given the new-coach factors. But if the Gators haven’t pulled away by halftime, tempo and quality quarterback play from FAU are likely to be the two prime reasons.
Accuracy vs. Precision
It’s accurate to say that Earth is less than 100 million miles from the Sun, but it’s not at all precise. To say that Earth is 98,776,522 miles from the sun is to use a precise number that is not at all accurate.
Aaron Philo has a limited amount of film to go on, having been a backup to an entrenched starter for two years. And because he appeared in five games in 2024 due in part to that entrenched starter’s injuries, Georgia Tech had him play in just one game (against an FCS opponent no less) to redshirt in 2025. Therefore, most of his game tape was when he was but a year out of high school. It’s not a lot to go on.
One thing that becomes apparent when you do look at his Yellow Jacket tape is that ball placement was an issue for him. That’s not anything you’d worry too much about with a true freshman. You’d want to see things like poise and not throwing directly to defenders. Which, to Philo’s massive credit, you do.
But as you watch his highlights, you start to notice a lot of good catches by receivers. Well, that, and most of his biggest completions against Miami in ’24 were to completely wide open guys thanks to soft prevent defense. I see diving catches, jumping catches, and Eric Singleton getting away with a couple of push-offs.
I also see a terrific comeback throw on the run to Bailey Stockton, and mostly a lot of good decision making. It is a highlights package, so it won’t show his bad plays. You have to go to the condensed game to see that his interception against NC State bounced off of a receivers hands. Or to see that his interception against Virginia Tech also literally went through an open receiver’s hands, albeit a receiver who is jumping because the ball is a little, but not egregiously, high.
I mostly like what I see from what little we have of Philo, so this is what I’ll be watching on Saturday against what was a dreadful FAU defense last year. Not merely will I be scouting for if he makes smart and accurate throws. I also want to see precise throws. Ball placement matters even more in the SEC than it did in the ACC.
New punt rules
Every so often, coaches on some level or another decide to get creative with the scrimmage kick rules. Standard offensive and defensive formations have been mined for about all their loopholes, but the scrimmage kick formation — those used for punts and field goals — still have some depths to be plumbed. You may remember as an example the A-11 offense from some time ago, which was subsequently banned by rules just about anywhere it wasn’t already.
In recent years, teams in college have gotten creative with hiding who is and isn’t eligible on punts. The reason, of course, is to try to find new ways to pull off fakes. The NCAA tried to tamp down on that this offseason, arguing that the rules were never meant to make it easy to disguise who is and isn’t eligible.
This video lays it all out, but it goes like this. Scrimmage kick formations have many things in common with regular formations, such as there being five players who are ineligible receivers, the requirement of a minimum of seven players lined up on the line of scrimmage, and covered up guys on the line of scrimmage being ineligible by formation. On normal plays, the five ineligible receivers must wear a number between 50 and 79, which is why offensive linemen always wear numbers in that range.
With that background in place, teams may choose one of the following three options:
- Have five players whose normal numbers are 50-79 on the field. They may line up anywhere, and they are ineligible receivers by rule.
- Have fewer than five players whose normal numbers are 50-79. In this case, there must be two players on each side of the long snapper (a “two-by-two formation” as the NCAA calls is). Those four plus the long snapper are ineligible receivers by rule, and none of them may go in motion or shift once lined up.
- Have fewer than five players whose normal numbers are 50-79, but have one or more players temporarily wear a number between 50 and 79 such that there are five guys wearing something in that range. Those five are ineligible receivers and may line up anywhere. The changes will be announced as has been done in recent seasons: “player 12 for the kicking team is now wearing 56”, etc.
This will make it easier for defenses, yes, but also for officials. They too could potentially lose track of who is and isn’t eligible on a play.
Some special teams aficionados have panned the new rules, but constraints foster creativity. We might get to see some new things on punts and field goals as teams test out what they can do.
And also, we’ll probably see a bunch of five-yard illegal formation penalties on punts for a little while. Perhaps especially in James Madison games.