By: Gentry Hawk -- July 11, 2025 With year four of the Billy Napier era right around the corner, Gator Country breaks down Florida’s cornerback room as the Gators close in on the start of fall camp. After having one of their best seasons in quite some time last year under former defensive backs coach Will Harris, Florida’s familiar cornerback room looks to take a bigger step forward in 2025 under new defensive backs coach Deron Wilson. Fall camp preview: Breaking down Florida’s cornerback room | GatorCountry.com
So much talent in that room. Not sure which ones start but several of these young men will see plenty of playing time. I'm really happy with the talent now all we need is to see them play together under the lights... in The Swamp. I hope they take that next step in their development. And even though many of them have been here for a while they need to play as one unit together on the field on game day. If they stay hungry and healthy we win. But we all know it starts up front. Our D-line play will be key to the LBs and the secondary play. Let's hope for a healthy year.
Im not even sure who will be playing of our dbs. We had so many injuries last year, it seemed it was a different group every week
If injury shows its ugly head, when Gates gets back healthy, he can cover at cb since star is well covered by Denson. That would be almost equivalent to Dijon in coverage and speed at cb. Gates is a good tackler so would prefer him at star or safety.
I agree we have the talent but what needs to happen is start getting INT's and maybe start causing some fumbles. The secondary started playing a lot better towards the end of the season and while we have some green players this year, hopefully that trend will continue. Those picks against Ol Piss and LSU come to mind.
We got a bit better with regard to defensive INTs last year (2024)... but more is better. TEAM INTs: 2021 - 9 2022 - 9 2023 - 3 2024 - 14 https://floridagators.com/sports/football/stats/2021
What would be nice is if we could get to the +20 range in TO margin. I'm not thinking we are going to replicate have a defense that will hold teams to 14 points a game, but having a good TO margin would go a long way toward winning games.
Getting into the 20+ INTs for a season is realistic, IMHO. Ron Roberts is the right man (DC) to get all of our position coaches on the same page.
Yeah, that is the best way to look at that kind of stat... being a plus 20 or more in the total TO margin would be nice.
And to get that kind of margin we would need to not turn the ball over ourselves. Good news there is Baugh, Jackson and DJ don't put it on the turf that much anyway and with a year under his belt DJ doesn't throw it to the other team much hopefully. There were some passes last year that should have been picks for him that the defender dropped.
He did but he also threw a few picks. Including the game winner for us and another that didn't count. I don't think we are going to keep teams from scoring like the Meyer teams, but if we could hold them to 20 points a game, we have a shot.
if we could hold the top five teams that we played to 20 points a game we are going to be not only in the playoffs but solidly in the playoffs