There is an odd contradiction happening with Gator football right now.
On the one hand, the program has about 89 or 90 scholarships committed to the 2022 football season, depending on whether you’re counting former walk on long snapper Marco Ortiz (he got one last year, but renewal isn’t guaranteed). This count does not include Emory Jones, if you’re wondering.
UF therefore needs to shed four or five players on net by the start of fall camp. Since there is/should be/will be real interest in getting a slot receiver, at least one defensive tackle, and maybe a tight end out of the portal, the number of existing players who need to move on is more than just four or five.
At the same time, many stories from the spring session are about thinness on the roster. How can a program be more than a couple of players over the limit and also thin? Here’s my explanation.
Tight end has been the most acute spot of worry, and it’s one I wouldn’t have guessed. The Gators have six scholarship tight ends including signees, which is a pretty high number. The issue is that two of the six are true freshmen who didn’t enroll early, and then a wave of bad injury luck took three of the four older players off the field. Jonathan Odom and Nick Elksnis will at least be fine for the fall; Billy Napier described Gage Wilcox’s injury as “potentially career-ending”, which is awful for him.
The case of slot receiver is one I already covered. They were short at receiver by one before Fenley Graham switched positions, but “receiver” covers everyone who lines up out wide. Dan Mullen signed a bunch of tall receivers but only one true slot guy (who has since transferred) in his four years. That’s recruiting mismanagement by the old staff.
Defensive end is also a spot of worry for recruiting reasons. Because the old staff spent most of its early edge rushing budget on edge rushing Bucks, there are only one or two veteran defensive ends on the roster depending on whether Dante Zanders is working as an emergency fill-in at tight end or not (he played both positions in high school and started as a TE at Florida). Princely Umanmielen is the only DE who’s played much, though fortunately Tyreak Sapp and Justus Boone have gotten some good reviews this spring. Regardless, four of the five or six DEs are either 2021 or 2022 recruits. Numbers are technically there, but they’re very green.
Defensive tackle is finally up on numbers, but it’s also very green. Because three graduate transfers took up a lot of snaps last year, the younger guys aside from Gervon Dexter just didn’t get to play much. Some of them, like Jaelin Humphries and Lamar Goods, wouldn’t have played much anyway because of injuries. The Gators aren’t so much thin at these defensive line positions as they are inexperienced, but that often gets communicated as “thin”, meaning “thin on proven players”.
And then, there is a glut of players in the defensive backfield. Florida will roll five defensive backs out there regularly, but going three deep at all positions would imply 15 players. Instead, UF has 18 after Graham’s move to receiver. Napier signed three and took Jalen Kimber as a transfer to make sure there isn’t a future scholarship gap, and Trey Dean using his Covid exemption is an extra guy who wouldn’t normally be there.
Still, there are just so many players back there. It’s evenly split at nine corners and nine safeties. One of those positions is very over-provisioned if the third defensive back in nickel packages will be more of one kind of player than the other. These spots will be slightly less obviously over budget if the nickel will sometimes be one or the other. Regardless, UF is over the 85 cap in no small part because it has too many DBs.
Finally, there may be some oddities of timing and also the uncertainty of the early days of Napier’s regime.
Taking Jack Miller was a no-brainer since Napier had built a relationship with him as a recruit. With Jones’s departure far more likely to happen than not, UF would’ve had all its eggs in the sometimes injury-prone Anthony Richardson basket without a transfer. That, plus there being two 2021 signees, meant that after taking a ’22 QB signee there were six signal callers. One has left as expected, and one of those ’21 guys leaving after spring is also expected. They’ll get down to the normal four, but timing made the room too crowded for a time.
As for judgment calls, Napier went for insurance in places he might not have needed it. If Jaydon Hill comes back 100%, then Kimber might not have been an absolute need. Maybe Kimber turns out to be a future pro and better than anyone other than Jason Marshall, in which case you absolutely take him and let someone else find a new home. We’ll see on that one.
Montrell Johnson is another guy I’m thinking of here. There was uncertainty about how Nay’Quan Wright would recover after his injury, Lorenzo Lingard has yet to put it all together, and Trevor Etienne will probably be good but also will be a true freshman. With all of that put together, would you be willing to bet your run-first system on Demarkcus Bowman and whatever Wright looks like after recovery?
Turns out, Lingard is reportedly thriving in the new scheme in a way he never did under Mullen. Wright has recovered quickly enough to be out at spring practice, albeit in a non-contact jersey. And then, Bowman is showing out as you’d expect.
Johnson may end up fourth-string this year. Still a good take? At the time in December, maybe? Again, it’s a judgment call. If Florida didn’t take him then, he’d be somewhere else. Napier knows him well, obviously, so he’s a more known quantity than a post-spring transfer would be if Wright had setbacks or Lingard was still lost.
Those last three examples are smaller things, but they all add up.
UF is legit understaffed in some areas, but it’s either due to injury (tight end) or a sub-position group specialty (slot). Most of the rest of the “thin” discussion is “thin on proven players”. The Gators are also mildly overstaffed at places like QB and RB but more noticeably overstaffed in the defensive backfield.
That’s how a team can be well over the scholarship limit and also thin.