It was good to see that everything came through with recruits being able to go to campuses again. I know the announcement of the end of the dead period was a while ago, but it was getting to be a, “I’ll believe it when I see it” kind of deal after more than a year of no in-person visits.
The Gators weren’t able to fill up their entire 2022 class after the first weekend or anything, but they did get some important guys to come to Gainesville and meet with the coaches in person. As far as I understand it, that’s no small thing for the staff’s recruiting efforts.
While they did upgrade the staff in recent years with some high-energy guys like Tim Brewster, David Turner, Wesley McGriff, and Jules Montinar, the core group of coaches are not known to be elite recruiters. Dan Mullen and his top lieutenants need more than the superficial, rah-rah stuff because they don’t excel at it. They need to work with guys in person, get them into the film room, show them what development is going to be like.
Not every top prospect will go for that. Given the results in recent years, it’s not out of line to say that most top prospects won’t go for it, at least not yet. A big UF draft class this spring helped to reestablish Florida as a place to go to prepare guys for the next level, but the program has a ways to go to get to where that factor alone sells itself like it does at Alabama, Clemson, and Ohio State.
It’s good for business, then, that players can meet the coaches in person. It sets up only the third regular recruiting class for the Mullen regime.
Mullen’s transitional 2018 class ended up 14th overall in the 247 Sports Composite, but that’s not factoring in losing Randy Russell right away to a heart condition. It was not a terrific result, but it was better ranked than Jim McElwain’s transitional class at least. It also, needless to say, doesn’t qualify as a regular class.
The 2019 class should’ve been a big jump with a full year of regular recruiting going on, but it wasn’t in the end. It made it to 9th in the Composite, but that rating apparently includes three non-qualifiers (Diwun Black, Deyavie Hammond, Arjei Henderson) and a guy with a federal visa issue who didn’t make it to campus (Wardrick Wilson). Then there were Chris Steele and Jalon Jones, who were gone by summer. The class’s true ranking was well below that initial top-ten mark considering all six mentioned above were 4-star prospects with Steele, Henderson, and Black among the eight top-rated players of the haul.
The 2020 class at least calmed that stuff back down, as Mullen took fewer academic risks. The program also was coming off of a pair of top ten finishes in the polls, showing proof of concept on the field. It finished up before the pandemic really began affecting things on US shores, so it was a good do-over for a regular recruiting class.
It too ended up ninth at first, but it lost a 4-star player in Issiah Walker to him wanting to go back home because of the pandemic. It was a nice boost that UF got its first 5-star signee since 2015, but after losing Walker it was a borderline top ten haul at best.
Then the 2021 class was not a regular deal because of the never-ending dead period. It ended up 12th in the Composite, in part because it was on the small side. It had to be, because the Gators needed to leave some initial counter spots open for immediate help at defensive tackle plus the announced transfer of Demarkcus Bowman. It out punches its weight if you account the transfers in its favor, but I don’t because attracting high school and JUCOs is still a different thing with different rules than attracting transfers from other Division I schools. The ’21 class at least, so far, has not had any non-qualifiers or players leaving before fall camp even starts (though there’s still time for the latter, obviously).
So, the two best initial class rankings Mullen has gotten at Florida were in 2019 and 2020. The former was arguably fudged a little with reported signings of multiple guys who the staff knew weren’t going to qualify — such was not quite the same case with non-qualifier Johnnie Brown in ’20 — but both made the top ten.
Not coincidentally, they were the two classes that were neither transitional nor affected by the pandemic. They were ones where Mullen and his guys were able to do the most in-person recruiting. That’s where they’re the best, even if their best isn’t one of the nation’s best.
Florida came out of the dead period with just six commitments, which is not unreasonable for early June but does lag where they’ve been in past years. It’s fine, though.
Some of the commits who would be on the books in this kind of time frame were guys who weren’t really Gator football material and who didn’t make it in the final hauls. Here I mainly think of iffy offensive linemen that John Hevesy went after for some reason, like Jovens Javier (committed June ’19, signed with Tennessee State in May ’20), Javonte Gardner (committed December ’19, signed with Jackson State in December ’20), and Adrien Strickland (committed May ’20, signed with South Alabama in February ’21). I’d rather Florida not take those kinds of commitments and have a smaller number in the class in the summer.
We’ll see if the in-person recruiting along with the draft success of 2021 bears fruit come December. If the Gators do end up in the top ten, and they’re solidly in there instead of tenuously while sweating out qualifiers, then we’ll see a real pattern where getting guys on campus does make a real difference.