It took a few days after I published my comparison of Florida’s eight-man draft classes of the last decade for me to realize this fully: UF should’ve tied its seven-round record for draft picks. I still don’t entirely understand why Trevon Grimes wasn’t picked, and if he had been, then the Gators would’ve had nine guys taken. That would’ve tied the 2010 draft haul for most through seven rounds in school history.
To be sure, it would take a lot for the ’21 class to measure up to the ’10 class even if Grimes had been picked. There were six picks across the first two rounds in 2010 compared to half that in 2021, and three of those six went on to appear in Pro Bowls.
But of the eight-man classes in the last ten years, the one just taken was more solidly there than half of them. Its main competition would be the ’13 draft class.
The 2013 class’s lowest guy taken was Josh Evans in the sixth round, and he managed to put together a four-year career. In the NFL that’s not bad, especially for someone taken so late. Of course, the ’13 class was still entirely made of Urban Meyer recruits. They, along with a couple guys who went in the ’14 draft, were the final vestiges of Florida’s last glory era.
The 2015 eight-man class needed the Raiders to burn a pick on Old Man Debose to even get that many. The 2017 eight-man class needed a marginal pro in Joey Ivie to go in the seventh round as well just to get there. To his credit, he’s bounced up and down between practice squads and full rosters ever since. It’s hard to manage even that much when almost the entirety of the league consists of absolute athletic freaks that probably shouldn’t exist (and might not without pharmaceutical wonders).
The 2021 class made it to eight selections comfortably, with Stone Forsythe’s selection in the sixth round a surprise for being that low. No one would’ve batted an eye if he’d gone in the third round given the pre-draft buzz that was building around him.
What do we make of this after fully processing it? Primarily, it shows what a missed opportunity the 2020 season was.
The secondary that made everyone mad and performed so poorly as to get both position coaches fired saw two guys taken in the middle rounds. Another member of it (Kaiir Elam) is getting early projections as high as the first round for next year.
One missing defensive tackle starter probably was the difference between losing to and beating Texas A&M without changing anything else. The LSU game was a cascade of issues in a once-in-a-decade upset given the internals of the contest. UF outgained the Tigers by nearly 200 yards, winning on a per-play basis by a 8.2 to 4.9 margin, but three turnovers and a bad showing on third downs cost the Gators the game. Florida was able to hold its own with Alabama, but clock mistakes at the ends of both halves from Dan Mullen kept the team from having a real shot at pulling it out.
UF should’ve tied a school record for draft picks coming off the season. On top of that, it’s not hard to come up with a good sized draft prospect list for next year of guys who were contributors in 2020.
Elam and Zachary Carter are probably the top prospects, and Brenton Cox has the athletic tools to join them. If Shawn Davis can get taken then I think Trey Dean can too. Mohamoud Diabate and Khris Bogle have the kind of speed the pros are looking for at their positions. Jacob Copeland is probably your top offensive prospect, and he and Justin Shorter could catch some interest without Kyle Pitts and Kadarius Toney taking up so much of the spotlight. Malik Davis’s versatility as a receiver might get him a look somewhere in a late round. Ventrell Miller might sneak into a late round despite being better suited to the NFL of a decade ago than the current game.
That’s nine players right there, not even counting players on the roster who didn’t do much, if anything, last fall. The nine certainly doesn’t include the defensive tackle transfers. It also doesn’t capture a finally-healthy Jeremiah Moon or a Lorenzo Lingard who goes supernova now that he’s fully healthy again.
Not all of these players will hear their names called. I threw out about every possible one I could conceivably see getting drafted; we’re not going to see all of Dean, Diabate, Bogle, Shorter, Miller, and Davis go next year. Some will fulfill their potential this fall and some won’t.
Regardless, UF is set up to have a half dozen or more guys picked again in the 2022 draft. This, coming off of seven in 2020 and eight in 2021. Mullen and staff have restored the talent pipeline, and they did it in part by getting McElwain recruits to a level the old staff never could. The most underrated success of the Mullen era so far is how well they did in developing the holdover players.
That’s a good sign for the future, but it does say something about the past too. The Gators are producing draft picks at about as high a rate as they ever do. They aren’t skewing towards the top of the draft as much as they can get, but there are a sufficient number of talented players to compete with anyone on any given day.
The trick will be making sure they deploy the talent properly every single week. The A&M loss is no shame, as the Aggies were the consensus No. 4 team in the polls. However a better defensive scheme probably would’ve gotten the W even without Kyree Campbell. The coaches obviously didn’t get the team up for LSU — or the Cotton Bowl, if you don’t want to write that game off entirely as a practice — and Mullen hurt the cause in Atlanta with clock management.
It’s hard to do do it right every single week, of course. The head coaches who can are the ones who wear gaudy rings and get statues. But getting there or not is going to define whether Mullen will get that kind of jewelry or settle into the second tier of good coaches who aren’t legends.