One of the questions I can never get a firm handle on is this: is John Hevesy a good evaluator and developer of talent?
Before you jump in here, there is a case to be made for the affirmative. Zach Alboverdi, back when he was at Rivals before his move to the Sun, wrote up a rundown of some of Hevesy’s track record. He stated, “a history lesson on Hevesy shows that fans need not worry about the development of the offensive line” before cataloguing some of the coach’s 2-star recruiting finds at Mississippi State.
There were some good ones, though the “good” in those finds was generally measured in terms of starts rather than pro success (more on that later). And just because they started a lot, it doesn’t necessarily mean they were truly good players. Sometimes guys who aren’t that good start a lot when there isn’t anyone else better to beat them out. That exact story has been playing out in Gainesville the past two years.
Hevesy also had the chance to develop a lot more 2-stars than most SEC offensive line coaches do because he signed more of them. A lot of that just comes with the territory in Starkville. Even after Dan Mullen got things rolling, it’s still a small town in the middle of nowhere Mississippi. It’s hard to convince top talent at any position to go there when they also have offers from literally anywhere else in the high end of the P5.
Some of the lack of success in recruiting at MSU was just that Hevesy isn’t a good recruiter. The polite thing to say is that he will give his expectations up front — you will come into the program and sit and learn and hit the weight room and probably wait your turn — and won’t blow sunshine up prospects’ rears. The less nice way to say it is that he’s gruff and not personable and pretty big jerk even by an offensive line coach’s, much less college football coach’s, standards.
He had found some gems, like Elgton Jenkins at MSU or Ethan White at UF. Jenkins was a 2-star prospect according to Rivals, low 3-star in the 247 Composite, and was a second round pick in the 2019 NFL Draft. Hevesy coached him in college all but his last season. White was the lowest-rated Composite prospect in UF’s 2019 recruiting class but showed promise late that year before injury derailed much of his 2020 season.
Counting Jenkins, Hevesy fully developed four NFL Draft picks in his time in Starkville. Gabe Jackson (3rd Round, 2014), Justin Senior (6th Round, 2017), and Martinas Rankin (3rd Round, 2018) are the other three. I supposed that’s not bad, considering it’s Mississippi State we’re talking about here.
Florida is an entirely different beast. Despite turbulence all over the offensive staff in the preceding years, the Gators had four offensive linemen taken in the 2015 NFL Draft alone: D.J. Humphries (1st), Chaz Green (3rd), Max Garcia (4th), and Trenton Brown (7th). It still seems weird that Brown lasted so long given how his pro career has gone; Andre Debose was taken 23 spots ahead of him.
Hevesy did have some success in working with Gator linemen in his first time around, but he literally had the title “assistant offensive line” title all four years as he worked alongside Steve Addazio. I know he gets some credit for those lines and linemen, but it’s a different kind of story when you’re getting guys like the Pouncey twins courtesy of Stan Drayton’s recruiting.
Jawaan Taylor was a draft pick after the 2018 season, but he looked on his way there from his true freshman season in 2016. The 2019 line understandably didn’t lead to any picks, and this year Stone Forsythe and (less so) Brett Heggie have chances to be maybe 7th Round draft picks or so. You inherit what you inherit, I guess.
His development program hasn’t been terribly quick, though. Each of Mullen’s recruiting classes have produced one projected starter each: Richard Gouraige from 2018, White from 2019, and Josh Braun from 2020. The other two starters would’ve been out of eligibility if not for the pandemic eligibility mulligan, but they also wouldn’t be in college as 6th-year seniors if they were pro material. NFL potential isn’t everything and there can be great college players who just aren’t what the NFL wants, but that’s not the situation with Stewart Reese and Jean Delance.
It is also less inspiring that Braun is penciled in to play out of position at guard instead of out at tackle. Gouraige did that the past two years and was serviceable but not suited to the spot. When UF really needed yards in 2020, they usually ran away from the side with a tackle playing guard for a reason. Yes, even despite all the problems Reese and Delance had. Braun is bigger and more physical so he may do better, but you generally want tackles playing tackle and would want to see guys signed to be guards to actually, y’know, be good enough to start at guard.
I get that Mullen and his mafia are a different sort of set for today’s game, preferring to redshirt more players than most blue blood programs and develop players from the ground up. There are some obvious candidates like 2019 signee Kingsley Eguakun who would really be pushing for playing time if not for the COVID mulligan.
But also, Michael Tarquin from the ’19 class was supposed to be a strong candidate for tackle by now and reportedly isn’t all that close to beating out Delance. Griffin McDowell from 2018 has never been mentioned as a guy pushing for snaps; Chris Bleich from the same class started some on the worst UF offensive line in memory and left before the year was out in part because he couldn’t take Hevesy anymore.
It’s hard to be patient when things move so fast in college football now, especially with how teams (including Florida itself) can and do plug holes with immediate help via the transfer portal. It’s getting pretty close to put up or shut up time for Hevesy, though. I don’t pretend to think that he’ll ever get fired since he’s one of Mullen’s best friends in the whole world, but the line has underperformed what we know Florida is capable of. Muschamp lines did better than this. So did McElwain and Zook lines.
Mullen might be able to coach around deficiencies up front, but to do so year-in and year-out is to waste precious margin of error on a place that could be getting better. If we’re still here this time next year with no real pro prospects on the line — and make no mistake, there are no sure things even for the 7th Round right now — there will be a lot of very justified questions being asked.