When the Gators’ offense jogs out onto the field for the first time against Florida Atlantic next Saturday, everybody’s attention will be squarely on quarterback Emory Jones.
Sure, the progress the offensive line made this offseason – or the lack thereof – is an important thing to monitor. Ditto for a retooled receiving corps that’s missing its top-3 playmakers from last season.
But, in every level of football, you have to have a great quarterback to contend for championships.
Jones has shown flashes of being that guy in spot duty over the last three years, but it’s a completely different dynamic now that he’s the starter. Defenses will spend all week studying his weaknesses, not Kyle Trask’s. If he makes a bad play, the coaches aren’t just going to yank him out and put Trask back in.
The hopes and aspirations of the 2021 Gators largely rest on his right shoulder and his legs. Gators fans notoriously have extremely high expectations for their quarterback, and they should. The three statues in front of the stadium show the world what UF’s quarterbacks are capable of.
That’s a high standard for a guy with zero career starts to uphold.
But his position coach, Garrick McGee, thinks he has a chance to live up to or surpass all of the outside expectations.
“I think he can be one of those guys that we’re reading and talking about at the end of the season,” McGee said. “Now, he’s going to have to do his job, continue to prepare, continue to do a great job at practice, and then ultimately, in a few days, he’s going to have a time to go out there and have to perform in front of a crowd.
“But if he continues to show up with a great attitude and continues to prepare like he’s preparing, he can lead our team. We have high expectations. When you’re the quarterback at Florida and have high expectations like we do, he’ll be a guy that we’re talking about towards the end of the season.”
McGee also became the first coach to officially confirm what has been assumed for months – Jones will be their starter.
“Emory takes the majority of the reps with the ones,” he said. “At some point in the practice session, Anthony [Richardson] will go with the ones so that he’s comfortable with the No. 1 center and communicating with the No. 1 center. So those two guys, they get about the same amount of reps, but Emory is the No. 1 quarterback. So, he gets most of his reps with the ones, and Anthony gets most of the reps with the twos.”
One of the biggest areas Jones needed to work on this offseason was recognizing what type of pass to throw in certain situations. There are times to gun it in there as fast as you can, and there are situations that call for putting air under the ball and dropping it over a defender’s head and softly into the receiver’s hands.
That’s been a weakness for Jones in his 86 career pass attempts. Every ball seems to come out of his hand with the same speed and the same trajectory. That will lead to interceptions and missed opportunities now that he’s the starter. He needs to improve his touch passes.
His ability to read defenses was also a point of emphasis this offseason. When he was the change-of-pace option behind Feleipe Franks and Trask, he was usually asked to either take off running as soon as he got the ball or read one defender. Now he needs to be able to read the whole field without telegraphing his throws.
McGee has seen progress in each of those areas and more in training camp.
“Understanding angles and how defenders are dropping and what their shoulders are telling him, getting pre-snap reads of the defense and then making post-snap decisions based on what happened once you get the ball,” he said.
“I think from spring ball to now, he understands the details of our offense, and he has an understanding of defensive structure. And I think he’s growing because he’s starting to understand the timing and how the angles work when you’re trying to move the ball down the field.”
At the beginning of training camp, Jones also mentioned leadership as one of the things he was working on the most. He’s a soft-spoken guy by nature, but the Gators need him to be the voice that calms everybody down and rallies the troops in the huddle.
When something goes wrong this season – and many things usually go wrong – it’s up to Jones to get them back on track before the damage is too severe to overcome.
“Going into this fall camp, I’ve just been taking the mental approach, just trying to get this team ready,” Jones said. “My leadership, just trying to corral [them] in different ways. We’ve been making big strides as a team, so I’m very excited.
“Just trying to make myself more comfortable in different situations and be able to just make things work in different situations when everything isn’t going the way it’s supposed to. And leadership-wise, we’re going to face adversity. You don’t know when. You’re going to face adversity in a game this year. I’ve been trying to find different ways to bring the team together and get us back on track whenever that time comes.”
McGee said Jones and Richardson have grown in their leadership this fall, and it all started with them getting more comfortable within the offense. You can’t lead others unless you know what you’re supposed to be doing first.
“I think they’re doing a really good job,” McGee said. “I think it started with them gaining a better understanding of our offensive system, better understanding of defensive structure and how protections and everything works, and then your confidence starts to build. And then you have the ability to activate your leadership skills, and I think they’re doing a good job.”
If Jones continues to do a good job, we will indeed be talking and reading about him in a different light in a few months.