GC VIP Stadium Road Audibles — 4/12/21 Edition

“When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?” –apocryphal, attributed to John Maynard Keynes

It feels like the 2021 NFL Draft season has been going for about 20 years now, but I think that’s largely a factor of time having no meaning since the pandemic began. Nevertheless, I have been watching how the stocks of Florida players have been moving around — up, in most cases, thankfully — and that includes left tackle Stone Forsythe.

After the McElwain staff finished its transitional class and got its recruiting legs under it, they seemed to me to start recruiting for size above all else on the lines. The 360-pound high schooler Tedarrell Slaton from 2017 was the pinnacle of that on the defensive side, and Forsythe from 2016 was the same on the offensive side.

Forsythe was huge, even as a recruit. The various recruiting services had him around 6’7″ and in the 325 to 330-pound range. There were images of him early on where he made other normal P5 college players around him look tiny. UF listed him at 6’9″ and 312 pounds last year, and his NFL.com draft profile has him 6’8″ and 307.

It’s a challenge to play tackle at that height. It can be done; Alejandro Villanueva made the Pro Bowl twice as a tackle despite being 6’9″. However with fast edge rushers sometimes starting in a three-point stance and staying low, it’s hard for someone that tall to keep the quarterback clean in a crouch stance without bending at the waist. It’s not always bad in every situation, but bending at the waist is generally poor technique for offensive linemen as it can get the body unbalanced without use of the totality of its power.

In the end, that wasn’t as much a problem for Forsythe. He could get beat around the end by faster edge guys, but not always. That NFL.com profile says his pass blocking skills are “often starter-caliber on the NFL level”, but his run blocking “leaves a lot to be desired”. Indeed, the stats back up that the right side of the line was a more fruitful place for the Gators to run last year. But because the NFL is so much of a passing league, he gets a grade that rounds up to “will be starter within first two seasons”.

As such, Forsythe has been moving up the projections. One of ESPN’s guys called him a Round 2 prospect last week.

Early on in his career, Forsythe didn’t look like a sure-thing NFL prospect like, say, Jawaan Taylor did as a freshman. He took a longer route to get there, but he did get there. Which means, coaching an development had to play some kind of role. Which means, John Hevesy probably should get some credit for Forsythe’s upcoming draft spot.

I’ve been down on Hevesy for quite some time. He developed some very lowly-rated players into NFL prospects at Mississippi State, but he didn’t put together a series of world-beating lines. Could anyone at Mississippi State? Probably not, but the defensive line was almost always better than the offensive line, for whatever that’s worth.

One sign of a good college coach is to take players he didn’t recruit/sign and turn them into something greater. Hevesy did that with Forsythe.

However, Forsythe is the son of an NFL offensive lineman. I’m sure Hevesy did good things for him, but he also had a ringer in his corner since he started playing football at age 10. I don’t give Billy Gonzales much credit for Van Jefferson. Why? Because Jefferson is the son of an NFL WRs coach. He did prove himself first at Ole Miss in a way that Forsythe didn’t at Florida prior to the staff changeover, so it’s not a one-to-one comparison between the two. Plus Ray Forsythe did coach his son at the high school level some, but that’s a far cry from having a pro coach in the house. And Stone himself has credited Hevesy for some of his improvement.

There’s a well-known effect in social science research that shows that the more people know about a topic, the less likely they are to change their minds about it. In fact, their greater knowledge allows them to more easily wave away new information that contradicts their prior positions, even if those priors have been shown to be empirically false.

I know of that effect, so I actively try to avoid it. When I get new information, I give it as fair a hearing as I can. I change my mind about things more often than most folks I know.

Assuming Forsythe is a second or third round pick, should that change my judgment of Hevesy’s job performance?

It could a little, but not entirely. After all, one of my biggest gripes is his lack of success on the recruiting trail. One reason he has stories of developing lowly-rated talent is because that’s what he tends to reel in. Richard Gouraige, a high 4-star Composite recruit from the transitional 2018 class, is easily the top-rated recruit Hevesy had a hand in since he left UF to go to Starkville. That’s one guy, and he’s largely played him out of position at guard.

Besides, it takes five players to make an offensive line. It’s better than the alternative that Hevesy helped get Forsythe into an early-round prospect, but that’s one guy. He hasn’t done the same with players that he admittedly didn’t sign himself, but no one else is even close.

When Florida is good, it can put offensive linemen into the NFL just about every year. I am not sure I see when the Gators are going to get there. Gouraige, Ethan White, and Josh Braun might become pro prospects; maybe Stewart Reese could salvage something with a good showing this year. None of them are locks, though, and more than half of the OL guys the Gators have signed since 2018 have done little outside of special teams. Even this year, the penciled-in line coming out of spring included a transfer (Reese) and a McElwain holdover (Delance).

Forsythe alone is not enough for me to change my mind. I still come down on the side of Hevesy not doing a good enough job to be as entrenched as he is. Being a close friend of Mullen’s, he has loads of job security.

I know Hevesy always was more of a developmental than instant-impact guy, so it was always going to be a years-long investment. Maybe Forsythe is the first indicator that it is paying off, but we had to watch some bad and mediocre lines to get there. Those costs have to go into the equation too.

Anyway, I’m very happy for Forsythe and hope he does hear his name called in the second round. He’s just more proof of how loaded that 2020 team really was.

David Wunderlich
David Wunderlich is a born-and-raised Gator and a proud Florida alum. He has been writing about Florida and SEC football since 2006. He currently lives in Naples Italy, at least until the Navy stations his wife elsewhere. You can follow him on Twitter @Year2