For a moment Florida Gators freshman Tyrie Cleveland was able to forget everything he had been through and just play a game.
Cleveland lined up on the far side of the field, Tennessee defensive back Baylen Buchanan 10 yards away from him. Austin Appleby took the snap; Cleveland raced off the line, sold a comeback and sprinted past Buchanan. Appleby found the freshman receiver for a 36-yard reception.
The freshman couldn’t contain his excitement. He got up, walked through the end zone and sent a Gator chomp toward Tennessee fans in the end zone.
“I was a little nervous because he ran through the end zone Gator chomping, but I was excited for the kid,” receivers coach Kerry Dixon said. “He’s been through a lot and for him to go out there and get a taste of what it feels like was really good for him.”
Cleveland came to Florida with as much hype as any offensive player in recent memory. A five-star receiver that played his high school ball in Houston, but called Jacksonville home, Cleveland’s family moved him to Houston shortly after his brother, Timmie Johnson, was murdered when Tyrie was just 13 years old. Cleveland assimilated himself in Texas and even committed to Tom Herman and the University of Houston. Jim McElwain was able to get Cleveland to flip that commitment to Florida after winning over Cleveland’s family but his time in Gainesville didn’t start off optimally.
Cleveland and fellow freshman Rick Wells were arrested in July after shooting BB guns into a dormitory on campus. The charges were eventually dropped from felony to misdemeanor status. Cleveland plead guilty to criminal mischief and six months probation.
Wells and Cleveland were suspended for the season opener.
“Anytime you go through that it’s a little mentally draining,” Dixon said of the incident. “He was down a little bit but he stayed engaged. One of the things about him, he always asks questions in meetings. If he didn’t know something he would always feel free to ask. He stayed engaged that way.”
Cleveland stayed engaged during that process but there was also a nagging hamstring injury that kept him off the practice field. With an off the field incident and an injury, Cleveland fell even further behind Josh Hammond Freddie Swain, two freshmen that enrolled early. Hammond hauled in five passes in the season opener. Swain hauled in two passes in the opener and has at least one reception in all four of Florida’s games in 2016.
Cleveland is still trying to grasp the playbook. There are option routes where he needs to decipher what the defense is doing and adjust his route to be on the same page as the quarterback. There are blocking assignments that he’s never been asked to execute before and route concepts that need to be mastered.
“You really try to push the learning curve, so I try to put him in as many difficult positions in practice as possible,” said Dixon. “I’ll put him in for every concept, but then I can watch film and tell what he’s comfortable in. When you’re thinking a lot on the field, you don’t play as fast. So I can see that on film and I evaluate it based off of what I feel comfortable with, and that’s when he goes in.”
Cleveland saw his first game action against Kentucky but spent most of the game on the sideline in Dixon’s ear begging to get in. He eventually got in at the end of the game but didn’t see a pass come his way. Cleveland didn’t play the following week against North Texas. He’s finally healthy, working with both the first and second team in practice and the Gators’ need him to get up to speed quickly. The offense looked more like a Will Muschamp group than a McElwain offense in the second half against Tennessee and Cleveland has the ability to give that group a boost.
“He’s just got to become more comfortable with what he’s doing, understand his assignments, the attention to detail it takes to be in the right spots,” McElwain said of Cleveland.
“This guy’s got a chance to be something special here.”
hope so hope so