I have been around long enough now that I have seen a lot of the football team archetypes in Gainesville at one time or another. I’m still waiting on a true Air Raid or a devoted triple option, and I may be waiting forever on the latter now that new NCAA rules are about to curtail cut blocking. But if something is coming around to the team, there’s a good chance I’ve seen it go around before.
Right now, I’m getting real 2007 vibes from the 2023 team.
To be clear, this is not about its spot in sequence. Florida never had a shot at winning a national title last year and probably won’t next year. And with apologies to those having fun with the HeisMertz campaign, the Gators aren’t going to have anyone take home the stiff-arm trophy this season.
However the reason I am feeling like it’s ’07 again is because of just how many young players are going to be playing prominent roles. They’re going to be doing so partly because of departures, but a lot of it is just that the kids are really, really good.
The exemplar position of this effect might be wide receiver. Billy Napier is a former receivers coach, and he helped identify and recruit some of Alabama’s transcendent pass catchers last decade. Dan Mullen didn’t leave behind a wealth of talent there, but consider what the fall practice reports are saying.
The best receiver on the team for the second season running is Ricky Pearsall. While not a young player anymore, he was a Napier transfer portal find a year ago.
Perhaps the other receiver turning the most heads is Caleb Douglas. His skills and quickness apparently have jumped out strongly during the sessions open to the media and public. He still needs to erase concerns about his hands dating back to last year, but the consensus is he’s far too good to not play him.
Napier himself has expressed confidence in the freshmen to help stretch the field. That’s probably mostly on Aiden Mizell, the truest deep threat among the trio, but Andy Jean has looked pretty polished since spring practice too. And, so far, Eugene Wilson is coming through on his promise. He probably won’t fulfill the wildest expectations that are out there among the fan base, but we’ll see him make plenty of plays.
That’s four of the five receivers that Napier has brought into the program to date. The fifth is Thai Chiaokhiao-Bowman, a summer 2022 JUCO add who’s been dinged up in the session a bit. He did get an increasing number of reps last fall, but I am not expecting a breakout. We’ll see on him.
But with a little projection on those true freshman, it appears that Napier has gone 4-for-5 at worst at the position. I’m old enough to remember when Will Muschamp signed five receivers in 2013 to make up for the lack of them still around from the prior two classes. Only one of them, Demarcus Robinson, panned out.
We’ll still see veterans like Ja’Quavion Fraziars and Marcus Burke, the latter perhaps even starting, but the new set will take significant numbers of snaps away from the incumbents. In Pearsall and Douglas’s case, they already did take snaps from the incumbents last year.
That’s just one position, though. There are upcoming success stories all over.
Tight end was mostly manned by veterans Dante Zanders and Keon Zipperer last season. Zip is easily the better pass catcher, but he’s out for much if not all of the season due to an injury from spring practice. You’d think it means Zanders needs to step up in response, but the bigger presence there has been Arlis Boardingham. He’s not the blocker Zanders is, but he’s a far better pass catcher and will make up for Zipperer’s absence.
The defense will be very young and skilled, which is again quite like 2007. I’m not going to run down everything here because that’d be its own column/series, but inside linebacker is probably the only spot that’s going to mostly just be older players. Everywhere else, occasionally by necessity but always by skill, Florida has some young guns shooting for playing time.
The names are similar to the ones you saw all spring practice, but true freshman corner Dijon Johnson is a new one. He was one of the few non-early enrollees, so we’re getting to see him for the first time in camp. It’s not a representative sample, but every highlight I see of the makes him look like we’re getting a good one. He might push for a reserve spot that otherwise would go to an older player. I can feel the Muschamp spinning in its grave.
There are a ton of first and second-year players in the two-deep in the backfield, so there will be some busts. But between Kamari Wilson, Miguel Mitchell, Dijon Johnson, and Ja’Keem Jackson, Florida will get more than a glimpse at what the future holds for young guys.
The 2007 defense had some busts too. The ’07 offense could get bogged down in a lack of creativity occasionally too. However the next year, everyone was older and wiser, and it all worked out. Heres’a cheers that.