Good morning on the first day of 2024. Prospero año y felicidad, y’all.
As a Gator fan born in the mid 1980s, my most hated rival is Florida State. Georgia was a punch line for Steve Spurrier for the decade when I really came of age. By contrast FSU was the Big Bad at the end of the schedule, usually at full strength after having breezed through a cushy ACC slate.
Therefore, every time I checked the score of the Orange Bowl yesterday, the quickly growing margin made me smile and sometimes laugh aloud. In case you some how missed it, UGA steamrolled the Seminoles 63-3. I wasn’t going to invest time in actually watching it — the two annoying bands would’ve necessitated having it on mute, and I still do dislike Georgia enough that I don’t actually want to witness them winning big — but it was still a welcome outcome to me.
I’m not going to go wave it in the face of FSU fans, because it’s not all that different than Florida’s bowl loss to Oregon State last year. Both Sunshine State teams in question had been decimated by injuries and opt-outs and barely counted as the same teams that had played in the regular season. The difference is that one team played a relatively full-strength UGA, while the other played Oregon State.
I mean, what did anyone think was going to happen with most of the best players out and a 247 Sports Composite 3-star true freshmen starting for FSU? Of course it was over from the coin toss.
Regardless, I still think that if one was to take seriously the idea that Florida State was a true national title contender this year, it would’ve been closer to 2010 Auburn than any of the Alabama, Clemson, or Georgia teams that have won most of the last dozen or so national titles.
The Seminoles were better than the Cam Newton/Nick Fairley two-man band, but they also weren’t stacked with talent from top-to-bottom. Take away the logos and it looked like a mid-level P5 team in a peak year.
I never thought Travis had elite tools, other than his scrambling ability. If you can extend plays long enough, college DBs will lose their ability to keep the coverage alive. FSU also was never able to bring in a real backup for him, with no one ultimately better than Tate Rodemaker behind him. And now, with Travis graduating and Rodemaker and AJ Duffy transferring, FSU has to hope lightning will strike in the portal to not have the bottom completely fall out of the offense as seen yesterday in Miami. To date, they have just one transfer commit — an edge rusher coming from their Orange Bowl adversary and not a potential starting quarterback.
In this day and age, it’s just hard to keep a quarterback pipeline going. Mike Norvell had some good luck in inheriting Travis, but he failed to set anything up behind him for years and is now having to hope for a miracle from the portal to compensate.
Billy Napier has also had a lot of rotten luck in the quarterback department. Anthony Richardson probably needed an extra year in college but was such an athletic freak that he got drafted No. 4 overall anyway. It would’ve been nice to have another season with him behind center to make something from nothing while the defense gave up backbreaking play after backbreaking play, but alas.
Then Jack Miller was perpetually hurt and never panned out. Then Jalen Kitna got arrested and dismissed. Then Jaden Rashada was the subject of the wildest NIL snafu to date thanks to a collective that was high on enthusiasm and low on wisdom. And most recently Max Brown, the dude that everyone knew was signed to be a career backup, hit the portal to try to find a G5 starting job after getting to show off his skills at the end of the ’23 season.
Right now Florida has just two scholarship quarterbacks with Graham Mertz and incoming freshman DJ Lagway. Urban Meyer skated by with just two scholarship quarterbacks most of his tenure in Gainesville, first with only two total in 2005-06 and then just two healthy ones in 2007-08, but you’d really like to have three or four.
I don’t see how anyone would transfer in, though. Mertz is the unquestioned incumbent starter for ’24, and Lagway is the future. Who’s going to jump into the middle of that? Maybe there’s yet another non-ranked JUCO or two in the cards for May, with one being a passer this time?
It’s even more an issue because Mertz is out of eligibility after this season. The 2025 QB scholarship room is looking like it’ll also have two, Lagway and whoever the team signs in the 2025 class. You could try to sign two in ’25, but good luck signing a second one who isn’t a complete project.
The best option is probably to sign another Max Brown-like figure at the February signing day. He won’t be in the picture for this year unless there’s an injury plague, but for the 2025 season, at least there would be someone behind Lagway who’s had a year in the program. I don’t love the idea of having only two scholarship signal callers in ’25, much less this very realistic scenario where one of the two is a true freshman.
All bets are off if Napier is fired sometime next year, but boy things look bleak at quarterback if that happens and Lagway doesn’t stick around for the new guy. You want to talk about some emergency portal scrambling, that’d be it.
At least Napier has signed a couple of top 50 rated high school quarterbacks in his time, even if one asked out of his NLI and ended up at Arizona State. That’s twice as many as Norvell can boast in two fewer recruiting cycles. Perhaps Napier will secure the commitment to a third this year, and that’ll help him out when the team gets to that brutal five-game stretch to close the year.