He was thrust into the starting job with his team trailing Kentucky on the road. Kyle Trask managed to lead the Gators back in Lexington and to eight more wins as the starting quarterback.
Six years a back up, now the starting quarterback at the University of Florida.
When he returned to campus in the spring his friend and former starting quarterback Feleipe Franks announced he was transferring to Arkansas and the starting job after four long years was now Trask’s. the experience he gained in 2019 has already helped, Dan Mullen says they’re working at a graduate level with Trask, who is already enrolled in graduate school at Florida, working towards a Masters.
“You know one of the great things is that we’re on kind of graduate-level stuff with Kyle right now. I mean he understands the offense and the reads and all of that. It’s how fast he’s getting to everything, the ability to check and change plays,” Mullen said of his starting quarterback. “The ability to extend the game plan where he has automatics that he can get us to, ‘hey, we like this play against this look’.
“I don’t love to get into three-way or four-way, or automatic checks and all of that stuff, it’s real graduate-level stuff in playing the position and now he’s managing and leading everybody on the field. That’s a lot of the stuff we’re working on right now with him because I think with him understanding the offense he knows where we want to go with the ball, what we’re trying to do on each play, and why we’re trying to do it. Now we’re just trying to put it all together and let him be that field general out there and let him go.”
Trask has been tasked with being more of a vocal leader. On the field, fans can see a fiery competitor as his passion pours out after good plays and scores. He needs to grow in the area of stepping up vocally with his teammates, something his coaches have challenged him to do. The early reports are that Trask has grown in that aspect but there’s another tidbit that Dan Mullen let out on Tuesday that shows even more trust in the quarterback.
His voice will be heard on and off the field. Kyle Trask will be in the meetings when the weekly gameplan is being set.
“One of the things is he comes and spends extra time in game plan meetings. He wants to sit in knowing we’re meeting. He wants to sit around. As a grad student, it helps he has a little more time on his hands. He’s always around the office,” Mullen said. “He’ll have input just because of his experience and he’s played and he knows he has input on the game plan. On top f that he has a lot of control at the line of scrimmage. He has a lot of freedom to call his own calls, call plays and check in to plays at the line of scrimmage.”
That is the kind of trust that is usually reserved for guys like Tim Tebow or Dak Prescott, guys that have proven it for years in the system. Trask, with only 10 starts to his name has earned that from his head coach and his position coach, Brian Johnson.
“He’s someone that has a really good head on his shoulders. He’s not afraid to speak his mind. He’s inquisitive and asks questions and he’s a thinker,” Johnson said of Trask. “He’s somebody that everybody can look up to and he sets the standard and an extremely high standard for himself through his actions and now through his words.”