Eight Gators were invited to this week’s NFL Combine, and a quarter of them were transfers that Dan Mullen brought in. Two more could easily get there next year between Trevon Grimes graduating and Brenton Cox possibly going pro early.
The NFL’s analysts like what they’re seeing. Van Jefferson has been getting praise as one of the best among the grouping behind the Lamb/Jeudy/Ruggs tier, while Jonathan Greenard is sitting on a grade of “will be starter within two seasons”.
Can Florida take full credit for helping these guys to the pros? No. Jefferson’s father is a former NFL wide receiver and current NFL WRs coach. Van became the best route runner on the team the instant he walked in the door. Greenard starred in 2017 at Louisville before missing 2018 to injury, though three of his five college seasons were under Todd Grantham’s watch at least.
Will Florida take some amount of credit? Yes, and it should as long as we’re seeing things like Jefferson talking up the program in interviews.
Dan Mullen is making UF one of the premier destinations for transfer players. He’s taken at least two each year he’s been in Gainesville: Jefferson, Grimes, and Adam Shuler in 2018; Greenard and Cox in 2019; and Jordan Pouncey, Lorenzo Lingard, and Justin Shorter (so far) for 2020. UF could take a maximum of two or three more this offseason depending on whether commit Leonard Manuel ends up in the program or not.
The quality has been high even as the number has been relatively high. Jefferson and Greenard were instant starters, Cox should be one now that he’s eligible this year, and Shuler earned a starting spot in his first season. Grimes, whether technically a starter or not in Florida’s long receiver rotation of the past two seasons, ended up third in both catches and yardage among wideouts in each of his two years and should be the top dog this year. The 2020 guys are less clear; Pouncey projects solidly as a backup, while Lingard and Shorter could be high contributors depending on their health and eligibility statuses.
The eligibility question for those two may go away in April. The NCAA is seriously considering changing its rules so that everyone in every sport can transfer once without sitting out a year. This can already be done in all but five sports, and football is among the five. The organization is likely to make it effective for the 2020-21 academic year because processing the increasing number of waivers for transfers has been such a logistical garbage fire. No one wants to go through it again.
This likely change won’t affect just Lingard and Shorter. It will be another piece to normalizing transfers through the sport.
I don’t think most players relish the idea of changing schools. They create a life at the place they sign, and they make strong bonds with their teammates and coaches. Transferring can sometimes mean admitting on some level that you made a mistake with where you signed, and no one likes admitting mistakes, especially publicly.
But increasing numbers of grad transfers made it seem a little more normal. It’s easier for a lot of them because going to a different place for grad school is common among non-athletes, some of their signing class peers will have gone by the time they get a diploma, and sticking it out through earning a degree means you don’t have to call your signing decision a mistake.
Then the advent of the transfer portal made it seem a little more normal. What the portal does is make it possible for players to talk to coaches from other schools without having to run it by his current coaches first. They can skip the coach’s hard sell for staying if they want to, which takes some pressure off. Plus merely having another formal piece of transfer-enabling infrastructure makes it feel less drastic of a step.
Dropping the requirement of sitting out a year for will make it even more normal. Right now, there are some number of players who have mentally overcome the stigma of transferring and made peace with the idea of uprooting their lives and leaving their friends but aren’t willing to sit out a year. Once that requirement is gone, they’ll transfer and make the act of doing so that much easier for others.
There probably will be an initial surge because the pent-up demand for the ability to transfer with immediate eligibility among current non-graduates will all release at once. The level will come back down, though, because ultimately schools can still only bring in 25 initial counters per year. There will be some initial instability as both players and coaches try to find an equilibrium, but undoubtedly the incidence of transfer will rise above current levels.
And here is where Mullen’s progress, planned out and intentional or not, in making Florida an attractive landing place for transfers could pay off even bigger than it already has. Some places like Alabama and LSU have sterling reputations for getting high school signees to the NFL; Florida may become that for transfers.
We might even see Mullen routinely sit in a position like where he is now after the February signing day with two or three initial counters open just to see who decides to transfer after spring practice. It’s not hard to foresee a lot of power schools doing that, thereby creating a new dynamic among P5 and G5 schools.
There are 65 P5 schools. If all of them sign an average of three fewer players per year than they do now in order to leave spots open for transfers, that’s 195 P5-caliber recruits who will trickle down to the G5 level. Given the sport’s existing power dynamics, it’s already expected that more great players who fall through the cracks will start transferring up from G5 to P5 before graduation once the new rule goes into effect. It will be an even higher rate than what people are thinking if 200 guys who would’ve been P5 signees end up at G5 schools every year.
All the more reason to set yourself up as a premier transferring destination. What’s happened naturally in Gainesville probably will start happening intentionally. Florida and Mullen have a running start. They are likely to do what they can to extend their lead and try to become the top place for talented players to finish their college careers strong.