After earning his degree from Auburn and seeing his coaching staff get fired, defensive tackle Daquan Newkirk decided to play his final season of college football elsewhere. He entered the transfer portal in early January.
It didn’t take him long to find his new school. He committed to UF just three days later and enrolled in time to go through spring drills.
Newkirk, an Orlando native, said playing close to home and reuniting with secondary coach Wesley McGriff made it an easy decision for him.
“I entered the portal, [McGriff] was just like, ‘Hey man, come be a Florida Gator,’ and that’s how it went,” Newkirk said. “I was like, ‘Come on, offer me, and I’m there,’ just like that.
“I love Coach [McGriff]. He’s always a high-energy guy, and we always talk about life. Every time I came to Coach Crime, it wasn’t about football; he always put those good talks in my head, and we just talked about life, honestly, and he helped me out with a lot of things.”
Newkirk said the football part of his transition to Florida was easy. The Gators’ defensive scheme is similar to what they did when he was at Auburn, though defensive coordinator Todd Grantham tends to dial up some more exotic plays on third down. The toughest part of his acclimation process was learning the culture within the Gators program.
“I think really just buying into the program, learning what the goals are, and I learned that very quickly,” he said. “They’re hard-nosed. They’re workers here, and I just had to get with the program, let the guys know that I was here to come work and not play around.”
Newkirk had a bunch of responsibilities thrown on him right away. Both of the starting defensive tackles from last year’s porous defense are gone, so he and Penn State transfer Antonio Valentino will likely start the season opener and play the most snaps.
“I hope to bring just stoutness all across the line, just us as a whole, stopping the run, do what we need to do, just be a team player,” he said. “I’m very excited to play [with] these guys. I think it’s a great group, and we’re going to have a great time.”
Newkirk has the size (6-foot-3, 308 pounds) and experience (30 games at Auburn) to be an upgrade in the trenches. He logged 40 tackles, five tackles-for-loss and 2.5 sacks in his three seasons as a Tiger. He can play either tackle position, though he has more experience playing the three-technique spot, which lines up over the outside shoulder of a guard.
Grantham expects Newkirk and Valentino to be big difference-makers for them this season.
“They both understand block recognition,” he said. “They both understand where the ball is going, how to press blocks, and they both have pass-rush ability. So, they’re really interchangeable from that standpoint. They can play both positions, or they can play side-by-side; that’s kind of how we’ll play them.”
Newkirk’s also expected to leave his mark on the program with his work ethic and the way he mentors his younger teammates. Due to some recruiting misses a few cycles ago, five of the Gators’ eight scholarship defensive tackles are in their first or second years in the program. The Gators need Newkirk and Valentino to help expedite their learning curves, as they’re going to form the core of the defense next year.
Newkirk has enjoyed working with them so far.
“With all the young guys, I just try to take them under my wings and just take them step-by-step on what I did when I was younger and how not to take those wrong steps and do all the right things,” he said. “I try to coach them on all the little details and just being coachable, just being a team player and all those good things. In each and every thing they do, I just try to help them, with technique, film, anything.”
One of those young tackles, sophomore Gervon Dexter, said he’s trying to soak up knowledge from the two transfers and become a better player.
“I think anytime you got older guys in your room, it’s always a blessing to learn from them,” Dexter said. “Daquan is like a totally different player than what you see every day.
“They have one year left and they’ll be gone, so you can take what they got while they’re here and put it into your game.”
They haven’t played a single snap in a Gators uniform yet, but Grantham likes what he’s seen so far from Newkirk and Valentino.
“Their work ethic, their character and all of that becomes contagious, and I think that that can breed into the habitual traits that we want from that unit and that group,” he said. “So, that’s the thing I think is great about having two veteran guys that have played snaps and have some maturity to them.”
Newkirk may only be a Gator for one season, but he couldn’t be any happier to finish his career close to home.
“I think coming here was the best thing I could’ve ever did,” Newkirk said. “And when I got here, I just felt like ‘Dang, this is home.’ Like, not just myself, that God has helped me, and I just was ready to go.”