Florida’s 2020 offense has mostly relied on veteran players with few slots for newcomers. There are still three newer faces — a redshirt freshman, a transfer, and a graduate transfer — who have done enough to warrant an examination of their play. Here are spotlights on each of them.
Nay’Quan Wright
Last year, I didn’t understand the running back usage while UF emptied the benches in the three biggest victories. In each of the shutout wins over UT-Martin, Towson, and Vanderbilt, Iverson Clement got one carry before giving way for Nay’Quan Wright to get seven, two, and three rushes, respectively.
Dan Mullen has always given preference to seniority as a head coach, and Clement did get his single carry before Wright each time. Mullen will make exceptions for exceptional play, but I figured Wright hadn’t been around long enough to stand out that much above the elder Clement.
I get it now. Wright has displayed the full set of skills you want from a running back. He can find running lanes, split out wide to catch passes, and block to protect the quarterback. He’s an every-down back, able to do as a redshirt freshman everything Lamical Perine did last year as a senior. He’s not as polished, but he’ll get there.
Wright doesn’t yet have the power that Dameon Pierce does, and it shows up in his greater production on the edges than up the middle. He’s yet to make much headway between the tackles, but a lot of that is still on the offensive line. He’s broken tackles on pass receptions, so we know he has strength, but he doesn’t need to be a bulldozer to be effective.
In the offseason, there was some worry about depth at running back behind Pierce. How things have changed. Malik Davis looks to be back in his old form, and Wright looks fantastic. I’m not sure Pierce or Davis has done enough to go pro, so now we’re looking at a logjam of those two plus Wright, a fully-recovered (one expects) Lorenzo Lingard, and 5-star Clemson transfer Demarkcus Bowman in 2021.
I could only guess how the rotation ends up with all five of those players vying for snaps, but I’m confident that Wright will be one of the top options. His future is extremely bright.
Justin Shorter
Shorter’s physical gifts are easy to see, fast and quick at 6’5″ and 225 lbs. It’s why he was a 5-star coming out of high school.
The lack of offseason practice time hurt him more than most, though, because receiver is a hard position to come in and play cold. You have to learn routes, formations, technique, and blocking, not to mention develop timing with the top couple of quarterbacks on the roster. It’s why only a tiny number of true freshmen ever stand out at the position. Shorter at least had a couple of years at Penn State to get used to the speed of the college game and learn how to learn a college playbook.
Shorter picked up some positive offseason reviews for leadership, and he has those excellent physical traits. Mullen has tried getting him involved despite the lack of practice time, and he has the third-most receptions among wideouts with six.
It’s mostly been quick passes to the outside, which are easy things to execute. There’s not much of a route, and the pass comes so quickly that timing isn’t really a factor. He’s not yet broken any of them for a substantial gain, and he’s the only receiver averaging fewer than 11 yards per catch at 7.67.
So, we’re still waiting for Shorter to make an impact as a pass catcher. That he’s playing at all is a testament to his high ceiling, and he has proven a willing blocker. The latter is essential for any Mullen receiver, and his size makes him all the more useful at it.
I don’t take much of what we’ve seen so far to be an indication of his future usage. He’ll do more as he gets more into the swing of things and develops under Billy Gonzales. It’s more than possible that we’ll see big things from Shorter in the future, but it probably won’t be this fall.
Stewart Reese
Even with the interior running struggles I alluded to above, Florida’s offensive line has played better this year than last. And before you jump in with your “it sure would be hard to be worse” (non-)jokes, there actually has been some real improvement.
Reese was the dream grad transfer, having played for Mullen and John Hevesy before. He’s been in the scheme and knows the expectations. He has tremendous size at 6’6″ and 350 lbs, and he had three years of SEC starting experience under his belt.
He has not, however, been a magic puzzle piece who makes everything fit. He was never going to be. While more than solid, he never made the All-SEC team in Starkville. He won’t this year either for a couple of reasons.
Though both he and Jean Delance have years of experience under Mullen/Hevesy, they had terribly little time to play next to each other in fall camp. Offensive line is as much playing with the guys around you as anything, and being able to read their minds is essential for picking up blitzes and adjusting protections on the fly. They cannot do that yet, and there have been some issues from it.
In his prior action for Mullen, Reese also played tackle in an offense designed around Nick Fitzgerald. While the Mullen offense is the Mullen offense, it’s far more designed around the pass this year for Kyle Trask than it was for a former high school triple option guy. Guard is the right spot for Reese, who struggled mightily outside as a redshirt freshman in ’17, but this is his first work there in this system. I’m sure his experience makes it less of an issue, though.
Reese has struggled with faster interior linemen, and he’s not always been quick enough on pulls. Seldom if ever has he looked like he doesn’t know what’s going on, and that is a real plus over some of last year’s right guard play. He’s without a doubt one of the best five linemen on the team, and he’ll leave important shoes to fill if he doesn’t take the NCAA up on the free year of eligibility and come back in ’21.