There are no obvious downsides to Florida accepting transfer offensive lineman Stewart Reese. He played two years for Dan Mullen and John Hevesy, so he knows exactly what to do and what to expect. His brother is on the team. He’s a three-year SEC starter. It’s all upside.
The only aspect that may give you a twinge of negativity is the reality that the Gators can really, really use him this year. Heading into Mullen’s third season, the team did need a solid grad transfer lineman in order to have a realistic shot at accomplishing its goals. I say “solid” because Reese is not an elite pickup. He wasn’t on the All-SEC team as a junior last year, and he won’t be a first or second round draft pick. He’s a clear upgrade to the line, don’t get me wrong, but this is not taking in a surefire top ten pick or anything.
There are some easy reasons to point to here. In 2017, the Gators signed just two offensive linemen. One, Kadeem Telfort, was dismissed after that year’s credit card scandal and has transferred from JUCO to UAB this year. The other, T.J. Moore, didn’t pan out after his 4-star rating as a recruit and has been a career backup. That’ll happen sometimes.
Then in 2018, Mullen signed four offensive linemen in his transitional class. Two of them started part of the season as redshirt freshmen last year, which is the good news. The bad news is that one of them, Chris Bleich, left the program mid-season. Richard Gouraige is still around, though, and should start again this year. The other two were Noah Banks, a JUCO who would be gone by now anyway had he not had to take a medical DQ last summer, and Griffin McDowell, a former Mullen commit at Mississippi State who has yet to play meaningful snaps.
In short: the only remaining 2017 offensive line signee is not a viable starter, and only one from 2018 is starting material. Those are your third and fourth-year classes. The alternatives are to either go old (by college football standards) or young.
UF will go old with at least three spots. Reese, Stone Forsythe, and Brett Heggie are almost certainly going to be starters, and that’s three fifth-year seniors right there. The Gators will either go old again with fifth-year senior Jean Delance or young with sophomore Ethan White at the non-Gouraige starting spot that’s left.
White is a unique character in this story because there is no “redshirt” qualifier before “sophomore” with him.
If I did the accounting correctly, Mullen signed 21 high school offensive linemen in his nine years at Mississippi State. If that sounds low, it’s because he signed a healthy number of JUCO linemen. Mississippi is a state where the JUCOs produce a huge number of huge linemen, so every coach in Starkville or Oxford signs a bunch of them.
Every single one of the 21 redshirted. So too did 2010 walk on Ben Beckwith. I mention him because he was one of eight offensive linemen who went to Mullen’s Mississippi State from high school and either spent at least a year in the NFL or signed a 2020 UDFA contract. Even in 2010, when most of the roster was still leftovers from the Sylvester Croom days, Mullen and Hevesy redshirted the guy who’d end up being the only 4-star high school OL prospect they signed.
They set up a pipeline based on experience, and they relentlessly stuck with it. That mentality carried over to UF. They signed a 4-star in 2018 with Gouraige, and he redshirted. They signed two 4-stars in 2019 with Michael Tarquin and Will Harrod, and they both redshirted. One of the 2020 4-star linemen has already transferred back home, but the smart money says the remaining one (Joshua Braun) will redshirt too.
There’s no throwing a true freshman into the fire to see what he’s made of. There’s no benching a veteran to more quickly realize the potential of a star recruit. You sign for Mullen and Hevesy, you redshirt, and then maybe if there’s room on the line you get to play in your second season.
It’s a testament to White’s work ethic that he went from an overweight signee, the lowest rated in Florida’s class by the 247 Sports Composite, to became the first high school OL signee not to redshirt for Mullen. It’s also a testament to the OL recruiting failures of 2017. In 2016, Jim McElwain signed two of the 2019 starters (Forsythe and Heggie) and an early draft entrant who was gone (Jawaan Taylor), so at least that was a good haul. The ’17 group offered no help, and White probably would’ve still redshirted had Banks been able to go. McDowell is still something of an enigma, though he missed a lot of practice time in 2018 after a scooter accident.
The gap between what McElwain wanted in offensive linemen and what Mullen and Hevesy wanted was easily seen in TJ McCoy immediately going from starting center in 2017 to third string behind a then-career backup (Nick Buchanan) and a former walk on (Nick Villano) in 2018. There was no way to build the line but to build it from scratch. In the meantime, they were going to stick with their modus operandi and going with experience first. That’s why Forsythe and Delance played so much despite their obvious shortcomings and Tarquin got his customary redshirt. It took Banks’s medical DQ and Bleich’s sudden departure to open the door for White.
I don’t think Florida could beat Georgia and win the East without Reese coming in, especially without spring practice. Players earn starting spots for Mullen in practice. There was no way a redshirt freshman who’d never played a meaningful snap was going to kick a fifth-year senior out of Mullen and Hevesy’s starting lineup without doing so in practice. The 2020 line was probably going to be Forsythe-Gouraige-Heggie-White-Delance. That’s not a top five team’s line. That’s not an SEC championship line.
Reese coming in means the weakest link can drop to the second string, and that’s Delance. The more nimble Gouraige goes to left tackle, while the stiffer Forsythe is no longer on the blind side at right tackle. Heggie still takes the middle, while Reese and White are the guards. The new weakest link (Forsythe) is in a place where he won’t be in as tough a role as last year. The future at left tackle becomes the present. The guard spot picks up a road grader where before it had a true tackle doing his best. It won’t be the best line Florida’s ever had, but it might be enough for this year.
Reese gives the staff one more year to follow its plan with the line. Three fifth-year senior starters will leave after 2020. A fourth who has started will too. All the former McElwain signees on the line will be gone. The pipeline will have to produce an SEC-caliber line by then.
Of the eight NFLers I mentioned above for Hevesy at Mississippi State, only one was a high 3-star and one was a mid 3-star. Four were low 3-stars, one was a 2-star, and one was an unrated walk on. He’s produced greatness from players the scouting services didn’t love.
He’s gotten better prospects at UF than he ever did in Starkville. It’ll soon be time to put up or shut up, but Reese buys him time.