My column for the main GC site last week was about how Billy Napier is actually turning over the roster rather quickly despite the 17 high school signees as of National Signing Day’s end. Once you account for transfers, he’s already matched Dan Mullen and is two behind Jim McElwain in terms of most newcomers in a transitional year.
While a number of Gators have graduated and six have decided to leave by transfer, the team as of right now actually sits a healthy distance above the 85 scholarship limit. Looking at a couple of different sites’ scholarship charts, the consensus seems to be that UF is on the hook for 90 or 91 scholarships right now.
The uncertainty comes from whether walk on long snapper Marco Ortiz will get to keep his scholarship from last year. The Gators signed a scholarship long snapper in Rocco Underwood in the 2021 class, and no one sets out to have two scholarship long snappers. UF did because it had a spare scholarship to grant last year — and because Ortiz had been a walk on for longer than a year, he didn’t take up an initial counter spot — but that was just a nice thing Mullen did for Ortiz. Just as it’s common for walk ons to get spare scholarships for a year, it’s also common for them to lose them the next year if there aren’t any spare ones.
I suspect Ortiz will be first in line for any leftover spots under the 85 cap, but I won’t count him here. Let’s go with 90 scholarships allocated for 2022.
This would mean that Napier oversigned by five. UF coaches didn’t get to oversign under Jeremy Foley’s administration, but Mullen did in 2019 at the least. I haven’t run the numbers on 2020 or 2021, but it wasn’t by much if he did.
In both 2019 and 2022, there were/are unusual circumstances afoot. Mullen signed at least two players in the ’19 class he knew weren’t going to qualify — I can’t remember if it was two or three for sure — and four signees ended up missing the academic cut. He oversigned by three in that cycle, so pre-knowledge of non-qualifiers meant he only really oversigned by one if he did at all.
At present, UF has four players using Covid waivers to come back for an extra year: Trey Dean and Ventrell Miller have announced they’re coming back, and former GC writer Nick de la Torre has gotten confirmation that Amari Burney and Jordan Pouncey are still on scholarship. The NCAA didn’t count anyone using Covid waivers against the 85 cap last year, but it hasn’t made a similar pronouncement this year. It could, but it hasn’t yet. Anyway, being five over the limit with four super seniors is not an egregious crime of oversigning, especially if Napier/UF knows something we don’t about the Covid waivers.
But we don’t know anything about Covid waivers, so for now we have to operate on the idea that UF is going to have to lose five scholarship players on net from the roster as presently composed. I say “on net” because Napier alluded to the fact that there are likely going to be a lot of players hitting the portal after spring practice.
Most I suspect will be guys unhappy about being buried on depth charts, so I don’t think the Gators are going to load up on transfers around then. There are always a few actual good players who want to transfer after graduating in May, want to be closer to home, or have conflicts with their coaches who decide to move on. There is a good chance that Napier will bring in more guys at that time, which would require more attrition.
I didn’t want to speculate about who might leave in an article on the main site, mainly because I don’t want people to get confused about whether Gator Country is reporting something it’s not. This is a newsletter for GC subscribers, so I know y’all can handle it.
Disclaimer just in case: the following is all speculation and not a sourced report.
With that out of the way, there are some obvious spots for attrition. For instance, Florida has six scholarship quarterbacks. Most programs don’t carry more than four, if they can even get to four. Based on last year, it wouldn’t surprise anyone if Emory Jones was one of those guys who wants to transfer after graduation. He clearly loves UF and perhaps wants to give it one more go with a new staff, but I do expect him to move on over the summer. With Jack Miller coming in to be the likely top backup to Anthony Richardson, there’s a good chance one of the 2021 signees will leave. Which of them would do it, I don’t know.
There are also a handful of older players who have yet to contribute much. Those kinds of players often hop down to the G5 or even upper FCS levels to get some playing time before their college careers end.
I might’ve said Dante Zanders could be one, but he already put his name into the portal and then took it back out to stay in Gainesville. Pouncey would be a classic one, except he’s already transferred once and would need a hardship waiver of some sort to play above Division II. I’m not aware of what grounds he’d use to get one. His brother is on the team too, so I expect he’ll stay.
Like Zanders, Griffin McDowell has changed positions, in his case from offensive to defensive line. He has seen the field outside special teams even less than Zanders has. The old staff never found a spot for David Reese, who was listed as a defensive back as a true freshman and eventually wound up at the Buck rush end position. Offensive linemen Riley Simonds and Will Harrod haven’t played much in three seasons, though Harrod got a little rotation time last year. Napier brought in two offensive line transfers from Louisiana who have a shot at starting inside, and they could easily block the path to playing time for Harrod and Simonds.
It’s hard to figure things out from there since the new coaches will look on existing players with new eyes. The old staff seemed to really like Tre’Vez Johnson, for instance, but the Gator Nation Football Podcast film reviews on YouTube showed him having poor technique frequently. Will the new staff be able to clean things up with him to fulfill his potential? Or will a less-frequently employed guy like Mordecai McDaniel be able to pass him up? We’ll see.
One potential trouble spot I could see is if Jaydon Hill wants to start but UGA transfer Jalen Kimber beats him out for the corner spot opposite Jason Marshall. Hill redshirted last year after missing the season to injury, so he still has potentially three years of eligibility left with his Covid waiver. Yet, he’s also going into his fourth year of college this season. If he has NFL aspirations, a second straight year of not starting isn’t going to get him there. For the record, I have no insight into his mindset or aspirations.
So that gives you an idea of what could happen. Transfers by two quarterbacks, Reese, and the two offensive linemen I mentioned would get UF back down to 85. There are some veterans who didn’t exactly play at All-SEC levels like Johnson or Burney who might get passed up by younger players and may want a fresh start. Plus some existing players may not get along that well with their new position coaches. You never know.
It’s uncomfortable for UF to be in a position where it absolutely must have a handful of players go elsewhere before the fall, but a lot of big time programs have been doing this for a long time. I don’t expect UF to oversign like this every year because its coaches generally haven’t, but already a lot of stuff in the Napier era has been unprecedented for the program.