Standing in the locker room of Hard Rock Stadium after the Florida Gators Orange Bowl win over Virginia Trey Dean was introspective.
The 2018 season had seen Dean thrust into a starting role after Marco Wilson tore his ACL in the third game of the season. Dean performed well given that he was just a freshman and expectations for what his sophomore season would hold started to climb.
Then Dean was asked to move to Star, a position that Chauncey Gardner-Johnson had held down the season before and it was a struggle.
Dean went from everyday starter to coming off the bench and playing sparingly. Physically, Dean as impressive as anyone on the field and on paper the move to Star should have worked. It didn’t and after a long season, Dean was mature enough to recognize that and admit it.
As a freshman playing outside your responsibilities are typical to just cover the guy in front of you or cover a certain zone of the field. It’s why you can see freshmen play right away. As the saying goes, the farther away you are from the football the easier it is to play early. Moving to Star was a whole different ballgame.
“You gotta be able to grasp a lot of things. Especially it being my first year. I remember at corner, I didn’t have to do nothing but just like little things. I was at corner, it’s not that much to do,” Dean said. “At Star, you gotta play the run, you gotta play the pass, you gotta blitz. To blitz, you gotta peel the backend and things, there’s a lot of little tweaks to it that can cause a lot of errors in a defense. Our defense is built around the Star. From last year, the defense, [Grantham] couldn’t really open it up cause everybody was learning, everybody. But this year, he could build upon what we did last year. But you know I was at corner last year so I’m still—I had to start over.”
In the past, Dean has been reluctant to move to safety, but that appears to be in the cards for him this spring. It’s another year and a new position again, but if there’s a time to “start over” it’s in the spring, not in the fall.
Speaking with the media on the Monday prior to the start of spring camp Dan Mullen spoke of getting the best 11 players on the field. It’s the job of the coaches to put players in the best positions to be successful. That didn’t happen with Dean at Star last year. It was an experiment that failed but it didn’t hinder Florida from a New Year’s Six Bowl game and win, so no crying over spilled milk. With a new team and a new season about to begin the question begs to ask, where will Trey Dean fit in this year?
“It’s going to be up to Ron [English] and Todd [Grantham] to make sure we have our best guys within different packages so we can keep our best guys on the field in the secondary … what guys can do and can’t do. You look at Trey Dean last year. He was more comfortable at some spots than others. We just tried him in spots where we’d never seen him before,” Mullen said.
“Part of that was to try to keep the five best guys on the field and how you’re doing it, but you also have to do it by the way they’re comfortable at those spots. Obviously, he’s a much better player when he’s at spots he’s comfortable in. We’re going to do a lot of that this spring where we find who’s comfortable where and how are the different ways and combinations to always keep our best guys on the field.”
Back in the locker room after the Orange Bowl Dean was asked point-blank if he would mind moving back to safety. He paused for a second, said he would be most comfortable outside and that would be his preference but he just wants to help the team. The fact that he wasn’t able to do that while playing Star had worn him down throughout the season and it caused him to realize that maybe a move he’d been hesitant about — one back to safety — could be the future.
“Most likely they’ll move me to corner or safety but probably doing like different packages,” He said. “So like in, in base I’ll go to safety you know just to have another somebody roam the field just to make plays…I most likely will be free safety so I’ll be roaming.”
Always a man of strong faith, Dean said he needed to just trust that God has a plan for him and that he needs to remember the fact that his coaches and trainers have his best interest at heart.
“I’m gonna always trust in God, trust in my trainer and trust in my coaches, continue to get better each and every day,” he said. “I think next year, this year coming up is gonna be a big year for me.”