One of the hottest items of the week on the Bullgator Den board was this USA Today profile of DJ Lagway. It covers some of how his time at Florida went wrong and how things are beginning to change for him at Baylor.
I came away with one major takeaway. Okay, two. The second is that USA Today has severely cut back on its editing to its detriment, as the thing is chock full of small mistakes. There is nothing that would call into question the veracity of the reporting, but there are plenty of things I catch in my own writing, working as my own editor, before I hit publish. It’s hard times out there even for major media organizations.
But that aside, the biggest thing I come away with is how all the older adults in Lagway’s life appear to have failed him.
I say “older adults” because Lagway himself is an adult. By the time he played his first game, he was old enough to vote and to wear the country’s uniform had he chosen to. He’s not a kid. He’s a young adult who’s learning to be an adult and picking up a lot of life experiences for the first time, but he’s not a child.
It’s clear from the beginning that Lagway sought to avoid much attention on campus. He says he never attended class in-person, opting to do all his studies online. He also described himself as spending so little time on campus to the point of not knowing what it looked like, which for the record is clearly him making a point through hyperbole since the football facility, practice field, and stadium are all on campus. He also describes not hanging out with his teammates enough, resulting in a lack of chemistry with them.
Matt Hayes, the article’s author, calls Lagway out on this. UF athletes who have been more famous (Tim Tebow) or more distinctive (Olivier Rioux) figured out how to attend classes without issue. I mean, I coincidentally ate breakfast at the same campus dining hall at the same time as the men’s basketball team in 2004-05, and no one ever bothered them. There might’ve been some fuss around Lagway going to class for a couple of days, but the students at least back when I was there acted appropriately around the star athletes. I imagine it’s much the same now; the novelty wears off quickly and you have your own classwork and life to deal with.
I do, as an introvert, get the appeal of remote classes versus showing up in person. I did every class I could like this, watching lectures at 1.25X or 1.5X speed when it was convenient or I felt like it rather than attending on the class’s schedule. I don’t know whether I would have done every class that way, though, and I had plenty of interaction with peers at campus groups I attended. And anyway, even just walking to and from class makes you feel like you’re a part of the community of the student body in a way you don’t get from watching online classes.
Someone should’ve told Lagway to stop isolating himself so much, but no one did. The older star players should have, and maybe they did. The article doesn’t say.
But the head coach, Mr. Culture Builder, absolutely should have. If your starting QB and ostensible team leader isn’t hanging out with teammates very much, that’s a huge red flag. I don’t expect Billy Napier to have been a full fledged sports psychologist, but he should’ve known that and gotten it corrected. Instead — and I don’t know to what extent this is true, but the person was in a place to know — Lagway’s independent QB coach tweeted that doing all online classes was the idea of “the staff”. I tend to believe there is at least some truth to that given Napier’s own behavior.
It calls to mind Jim McElwain’s utter disdain of everyone outside the four walls. Napier was something of a protege of Mac’s, having worked with/for him at Bama and Colorado State. If you distrust and/or dislike fans, to the point of blocking anyone on social media who criticizes you and taking a shot at fans with the long-outdated image of a basement dwelling Internet commenter, then maybe you don’t encourage your quarterback to get out of his bubble. Maybe you stuff him into a bubble to try to insulate him from those terrible know-nothing fans.
Lagway played through a lot of injuries in 2024, as the piece details. It’s so many that really he probably should’ve sat out to get fully healthy. The wear and tear from playing through those injuries meant that he spent the entire 2025 offseason recovering, which meant he was ill-prepared to play last fall. It showed.
There is a long string of things that led to Lagway having to be the guy in 2024. Jack Miller, Napier’s first transfer quarterback, was a bust and left the program. Napier’s first big high school quarterback signee, Jaden Rashada, got out of his commitment because of the Gator Collective/Gator Guard NIL snafu. Graham Mertz got hurt a couple of times. Max Brown transferred out to try to find a starting gig after playing in Mertz’s place late in 2023 rather than sit behind Mertz and Lagway.
And because Napier went the slow route with his rebuild and was under .500 after two seasons, he was in real hot water in 2024. Leaving Lagway on the bench to get healthy for 2025 while Aidan Warner played for the injured Mertz likely would’ve meant Napier didn’t get a 2025 in Gainesville. So Napier had to play Lagway in ’24 to save his job, which set Lagway up for failure the next season.
Not for nothing, there was a lot of pressure on Lagway to play because of how much he was making in NIL. If he missed most or all of 2024, it’s debatable whether some of his big money sponsors would re-up for the next year.
Lagway admits to making some mistakes, and it sounds like he did make some. It also sounds like he got a lot of bad guidance from coaches and staff, and Napier’s own job-related incentives were not aligned with Lagway’s best long term interest.
I wish Lagway well except in the scenario in which he plays Florida. He didn’t handle things the best while he was at UF, but to his credit, he took no shots at his former school when given the opportunity. And I really hope after Rashada and Lagway that UF stops being a place where quarterback cautionary tales are generated.