By Will Miles
Jaydon Hill Injury
Well, this is the part of the sport that sucks.
Jaydon Hill – who tore the ACL in one knee while in high school – is out for the 2021 season after tearing the ACL in his other knee during fall camp. Beyond feeling sick for Hill, his absence is a problem for Florida’s secondary which now has to find a way to replace one of the only guys back there aside from Kaiir Elam with on-field experience when the defense was actually good.
Guys like Rashad Torrence and Tre’Vez Johnson played some last season, but obviously last year’s defense was a sieve. Guys like Avery Helm and Ethan Pouncey have good recruiting profiles, but have barely seen the field. And guys like Jadarrius Perkins and Elijah Blades weren’t on Florida’s team last season so likely have some catching up to do.
I’ve listed quite a few names there though, and one thing is that there are a lot of good players and athletes in that list. And with a guy like Elam on the other side, these guys just need to be serviceable. It also isn’t like Hill was a lock-down guy in 2020 either, which means he might have been replaced as well.
Regardless, Florida’s depth takes a hit with the injury. More importantly, it points out the sacrifice all of these players make when they step on the field. Hill gets a lot of privileges being a UF student-athlete, but he also has made some sacrifices, none of which are more poignant than the rehab he is about to endure.
Prayers up for a quick recovery.
Who steps up?
I listed a bunch of guys in the previous section, but who is actually prepared to step in now that Hill’s injury is official?
I don’t suspect Florida brings in Blades if they were truly happy with their defensive back room. Yes, you add good players when you get the chance, but depth at that spot wasn’t really an issue already and Blades seemed a little bit superfluous. However, if Todd Grantham wasn’t happy either with the progress his team was making, or the depth behind his presumed starters, then Blades’ arrival makes more sense.
This is a guy who played in the SEC at Texas A&M in 2019. And while he didn’t have any INTs, he did have 3 PBUs and 2.5 tackles for loss. Perhaps more importantly, there is nothing about SEC speed that is going to intimidate him. He played against both Clemson and Alabama last season, so there’s nothing on Florida’s schedule in 2021 that he hasn’t seen before.
So if you’re asking me who is going to step up, I think Blades is high on the list. Of course, that means that he comes in and passes a number of players on the depth chart. I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but with Grantham hanging on by a threat, I suspect he’s going to go with the guy who has SEC experience.
Injury Luck – Part Deux
I wrote last week about Florida’s injury luck, and the injury to Hill just points that out even more.
One of the reasons that I harp on recruiting so much is not just because you need the best starters, but that you need players who can fill holes adequately when a starter goes down. In a sport like basketball or baseball, injuries are relatively infrequent so you don’t have to factor them into day-to-day analysis.
But in football, injuries occur a lot. That doesn’t mean that Florida’s going to suffer a huge rash of injuries like in 2013 when Will Muschamp was going through QBs like Pez. But it does mean that we should expect to see 2-3 significant injuries that force Florida to show its depth. Alabama showed that last year when Jaylin Waddle went down and the Tide didn’t miss a beat.
We’ll see if we can say the same about the Gators after 2021.
EJ Lightsey commits
Speaking of recruiting, Florida’s 2022 recruiting class got a boost when 3-star linebacker E.J. Lightsey committed to the program.
Lightsey is the 470th ranked player in the 247Sports rankings and is a 6’2”, 210 lbs linebacker from Fitzgerald, GA. He had offers from just about the entire SEC, so this is a player that a lot of people wanted.
I do find it interesting that Florida is bringing in Lightsey with linebacker Shemar James already in the fold. James – listed at 6’2”, 212 lbs – fits a similar mode to Lightsey and is ranked significantly higher. Of course, as I’ve illustrated multiple times, the difference between players ranked 129th (James) and 470th (Lightsey) is minimal when it comes to NFL prospects, so this is definitely solid depth for the 2022 class.
The class is still lacking true top-end talent though. The highest ranked player – Julian Humphrey, 95th nationally – would be the 8th best player in Alabama’s 2022 recruiting class. That’s a huge separation with players who make it to the NFL at a much higher clip than others.
Still, the film suggests Lightsey has a chance to be a solid contributor to the Gators, and with the development that we’ve seen in Ventrell Miller and Mohamoud Diabate, that should bode well for him moving forward.
First scrimmage
Mystery surrounds the program after Florida’s first scrimmage.
Dan Mullen went out of his way to commend Anthony Richardson afterwards, but it’s unclear – at least to me – whether he was playing against the ones or the twos. All discussion after the scrimmage was how the defense played really well, which of course kicked up concern about Emory Jones and the offense.
Two points to make here. First, we should want to see the defense do well after last year’s debacle. This is a unit that needs confidence badly, and if Mullen needed to call a vanilla game plan or sandbag a little bit to give his guys some juice moving forward, I wouldn’t put it past him.
Second, unless the QBs were allowed to run, this wasn’t a real scrimmage that can be evaluated. Neither Jones or Richardson are going to be as good as Kyle Trask through the air. I’m not sure there will be more than one or two players in the country this year who play better than Trask did last year.
But both Jones and Richardson are also very different players than Trask. They are going to use their running ability to create opportunities that Trask just couldn’t. That isn’t good or bad, but it does mean that the thing that has the potential to make those two special is missing when you put them in a scrimmage and don’t allow them to run.
Florida’s offense is going to be fine. Nick Fitzgerald averaged 6.2 yards per attempt in 2017 at Mississippi State. In a game that had become really pass happy by then, that’s just quarterbacking from the stone age. Yet there was Mississippi averaging 32 points per game.
Be glad the defense looked good. That’s the unit I’m concerned about.
AR Ready?
I mentioned it earlier, but I think it bears repeating: Mullen did go out of his way to praise Anthony Richardson. He did the same thing during SEC Media Days when he indicated that the QB competition was just that: an open competition.
At the time I thought maybe it was a motivational ploy to keep Richardson engaged. Or maybe it was an attempt to get more out of Jones. Or maybe it’s just the way Mullen feels like he needs to be because of the transfer portal.
Regardless of the reasons, he has been really high on Richardson and all reports out of camp suggest that he should be. Not to be a wet blanket, but I took a look at Richardson’s limited playing time and his high school stats and I think they suggest that he still has a way to go to be a big-time SEC QB.
But this is the year Mullen needs to find out. Grantham is on borrowed time, but that gives him the ability to find a QB this year and make a defensive coordinator next season if a change needs to be made. It also gives him the ability to slowly work Richardson into the rotation if he truly thinks AR is the guy.
It feels like Mullen has always been solidly around the guys with seniority at the position in the past. I am starting to wonder why that doesn’t seem to be the case this season.
Where’s Florida ranked?
Opinions are out on the Gators, and the consensus seems to be that Florida will end up somewhere ranked 10th-20th. The AP and Coaches Polls have Florida ranked 13th and 11th, respectively. Pat Forde over at SI has the Gators ranked 18th, Pick-Six Previews has them 19th, and Phil Steele has them ranked 27th.
I think this suggests that the AP and Coaches voters seem to think Florida is going to go 10-2 while the folks who are looking more closely at the schedule have them at 9-3 (or worse). Florida looks to be a true underdog in only two games: Alabama and Georgia. They’re on the road against LSU, so perhaps we should see them as underdogs in that one too.
That means that a lot of people are thinking that Florida is either going 1-2 against the three big dogs and dropping a game against a Missouri or South Carolina, or that the Gators are going to go 0-3 vs. Bama, Georgia and LSU.
That would be a nightmare. Dan Mullen is already 2-5 against those teams. The level of concern should he leave this season with a 2-8 record against those teams would be significant. I think you could even say it should be significant if he leaves the season with a 3-7 record against those teams.
I think this is a rebuilding year for Florida, but because they have had such limited success against the stars of the conference – and because Mullen had very little success against the same teams at Mississippi State – I think it’s a legitimate thing to start questioning.
Let’s hope we avoid having to ask those questions.
Anybody watching FAU?
I get why Florida’s opener is at 7:30pm on the opening Saturday. It’s hot in Florida in September. Night games are fun. And the SEC Network always has a prime-time slot. But the Gators are going up against Georgia vs. Clemson on ABC.
Even as a Gators fan, I’m questioning how much I’ll be flipping between the two games. I want to see how Emory Jones plays, how the defense recovers from a disastrous 2020 and how a bunch of the young guys perform in their first extended action.
But I also want to see how J.T. Daniels fares against what is going to be a ferocious Clemson defense.
I’m not sure what else the networks could do. The same problem exists in the 3:30pm time-slot as Alabama is facing Miami and Indiana is playing Iowa. This is the issue you run into when you have cupcakes on your schedule: when others don’t, eyes aren’t going to be on you.
Maybe that’s a good thing for Florida. Unlike in seasons past where their warts were obvious against Miami (2019), Michigan (2017) or Ole Miss (2020), the Gators will be able to ease into 2021 while breaking in a bunch of new guys on a relatively low-pressure stage.
I get why college football is the way it is. I understand why the games against FAU and USF exist. But man, week 3 against ‘Bama can’t get here soon enough.
Tebow Released
Tim Tebow was released this week by the Jacksonville Jaguars.
To see the joy in the media – particularly a subset of ex-players – at Tebow being cut is still perplexing to me, but perhaps it shouldn’t be. There are plenty of professions where people become envious of others who they don’t believe deserve an opportunity.
But here’s the deal. Tebow absolutely deserved an opportunity, and not because he is a former Heisman winner or because his former coach is now coaching the Jaguars. He deserved the opportunity because Tebow drives eyes and drives dollars and the NFL is a business.
After he was signed in May, his jersey occupied the top slot in the NFL shop. People are paying attention to the Jaguars camp in a way they wouldn’t just for Trevor Lawrence. And given that Jacksonville is Tebow’s home town, there are a ton of people paying attention to the Jaguars who just otherwise wouldn’t.
Are those football arguments for Tebow getting a shot? Nope. But Tebow’s spent a lot of time and effort building his brand. Part of that is calculated. But part of that is he seems like a genuinely nice person in a world where there are relatively few of those left.
He stands up for what he believes in and tries things other people would be afraid to try. Those are things I’m trying to teach my kids, and that’s a lot more important to me than whether he can block or tackle.
COVID realities
Tebow was at the forefront of my mind when I conducted an interview with Alan Levine, the President and CEO of Ballad Health and a member of the UF Hall of Fame.
Of course I had to ask Alan about his favorite Gator moments (Wuerffel to Doering) and for his pick when Alabama comes to the Swamp this season. But I also got to ask him about what happens to a hospital when it is taxed by COVID-19 cases, side effects of vaccinations and what a breakthrough infection really is. I learned a ton, and if you watch, I think you will too.
But the reason this made me think of Tebow is that most of what I write has to do with football. To put something out there that deals with something as controversial as COVID vaccinations required a leap of faith that Gator Nation would appreciate an honest discussion about the benefits and the drawbacks of vaccinations.
I’m happy to report that Alan says he’s going to be at the Swamp this year, despite the Delta variant surge that Florida is experiencing right now. But with the “controversy” this weekend about whether Florida was going to allow tailgating or not going on, it made me appreciate someone like Alan out there trying to get this sort of information out to the public.
You may disagree with him. I do on some things. But he’s also a great example of the positive influence that UF alums are out there providing every single day.