At long last, TJ Shanahan's Florida Gator dream is becoming reality

(Photo by Chris Spears)

“Dreams can come true, but there is a secret. They’re realized through the magic of persistence, determination, passion, practice and hard work. They happen a step at a time, manifested over years, not weeks.” – Elbert Hubbard

TJ Shanahan’s dream come true story comes complete with speed bumps, detours and an amazing string of events orchestrated with such precision that the only plausible explanation is unseen forces of the universe have been working overtime. When pieced together the Shanahan story reads like something only a novelist could concoct.

The Shanahan story begins long before he became a 6-4, 309-pound people-moving hulk who has settled in as the mortal lock to start at right guard for the Florida Gators. His first visit to Ben Hill Griffin Stadium was to watch his cousin Jon Halapio in a spring game.  

He was just a tyke when he visited Ben Hill Griffin Stadium the first time to watch his cousin Jon Halapio in a spring game. Halapio, a road grading hulk of a right guard, started 43 games for the Gators and was a team captain in both 2012 and 2013. From UF he spent a few years in the National Football League playing for the Denver Broncos and New York Giants.

A love affair with the Florida Gators spent that spring afternoon.

“I grew up watching [Halapio], and I remember I came to a spring game his freshman or sophomore year, and I just fell in love with being a Florida Gator,” Shanahan said Monday.

Time to start connecting dots.

Halapio was recruited to Florida by Steve Addazio, whom former Gator coach Urban Meyer compares to the greatest offensive line coaches in the modern history of college football. Addazio becomes a critical piece in Shanahan’s journey which hopscotches from Orlando to Austin to College Station and then to State College before Gainesville once again became the destination.

Halapio caught the Gator dream growing up in Orlando where he became a high school battering ram at Timber Creek prior to transferring to Texas where he played his senior season at Austin Westlake. By then he was a 4-star recruit that Rivals ranked as the No. 1 guard in the country and the No. 39 player in the entire country.

Everybody wanted him. Well, everybody not named Billy Napier. The dream of playing for the Florida Gators hit a speed bump the day Dan Mullen was fired late in the 2022 season and Billy Napier was hired as the replacement.

“I did [get recruited by the Gators] when Coach Mullen and Coach (John) Hevesy were here, and then whenever the coaching staff change happened, I didn't really hear much from Billy (Napier) and I didn't know who the offensive line coach was at the time,” Shanahan required.

More dots to connect. Mullen was the offensive coordinator and Hevesy one of the offensive line coaches on Urban Meyer’s staff at Florida when Jon Halapio was recruited in the fall of 2008. The other offensive line coach was Steve Addazio and the starting left tackle that year was Phil Trautwein, currently Florida’s offensive line coaches and one of the chief reasons Shanahan is now a Gator. Trautwein holds the distinction of starting at left tackle on two (2006 and 2008) Florida national championship teams.

Immediately following Florida’s national championship win over Oklahoma in Miami in early January 2009, Mullen departed for Mississippi State as the new head coach and Hevesy followed him. They returned to Florida in 2018, Mullen as the UF head coach, Hevesy as the O-line coach.

When Mullen vacated the offensive coordinator position, Addazio took over and was Florida’s only offensive line coach for the 2009 and 2019 seasons. He left to become the head coach at Temple in 2011, then took the Boston College head job in 2013. Trautwein toiled four years in the NFL, then became a grad assistant for Addazio at BC in 2013. Two years later, Trautwein was Davidson’s special teams coordinator and tight ends coach. He returned to BC in 2018 where he spent two years as Addazio’s offensive line coach. In 2020, Trautwein became James Franklin’s offensive line coach for the 2018-19 seasons. In 2020, he became James Franklin’s offensive line coach at Penn State where he remained until leaving for Florida to work for Jon Sumrall back in January.

Addazio re-enters the narrative in 2022 when he was hired by Jimbo Fisher to coach the O-line at Texas A&M. Addazio made Shanahan a priority recruit. Shanahan played three games in 2023, taking a redshirt. The entire A&M coaching staff was fired after the 2023 season. Playing for new HBC Mike Elko and offensive line coach Adam Cushsing in 2024, Shanahan realized his dream of playing in The Swamp.

This wasn’t exactly the scenario Shanahan grew up envisioning. He played 50 snaps at center for the Aggies as they ran for 310 yards while dominating the Gators, 33-10. Though he played in 10 games starting five for the Aggies in 2024, the decision was made to enter the transfer portal.

“I played and started some games and then that's when I felt like I should have just taken a chance on myself,” Shanahan said. “… it's kind of the same thing I got in the portal and I found Coach Trautwein and the rest is kind of history as well.”

It was a difficult season at Penn State. Predicted to be a contender for a deep run in the College Football Playoff, the Nittany Lions got off to a 3-3 start which resulted in James Franklin being fired. Penn State finished 6-6 in the regular season, then whacked Clemson, 22-10, in the Pinstripe Bowl. In 13 games, Shanahan started five games, played 416 snaps at the two guard positions, didn’t commit a penalty and didn’t give up a sack until the bowl game.

Within a couple of days after Sumrall was hired at Florida, reports surfaced that he had targeted Trautwein as his choice for offensive line coach. Shanahan knew the moment he heard the reports that Trautwein was Gainesville-bound.

“Whenever I was on my visit to Penn State he told me up front and he just said, ‘I’m not gonna lie, like there’s one job that I would leave this place for, it’s the University of Florida’ and I kind of knew,” Shanahan said.

Upon taking the Florida job, Trautwein offered Shanahan a scholarship. He made the official visit and then committed but even before he arrived in Gainesville he knew what he was going to do.

“I just wanted to see Gainesville,” Shanahan said. “I haven't been down here since I was, like I said, like eight or nine. I just wanted to kind of come see the place, but I knew I was going to come here, so I was just ready to get to work.”

On January 6, Shanahan’s dream of becoming a Florida Gator was at last realized. In the months since he and  center Harrison Moore have become leaders, both on the offensive line and the entire team. Sumrall has singled them out for their work ethic.

“Two transfers that have really set the standard for how we work – Harrison Moore, offensive center from Georgia Tech, and TJ Shanahan, offensive guard from Penn State – have both kind of elevated the rhythm that that room marches to,” Sumrall said. “Those guys have worked incredibly hard. They have a lot of price in their craft and what they’re doing. And I’m very direct. When we do something well, I tell our guys we did it well. When we don’t, I let them know it wasn’t quite good enough.”

That also seems to be the Phil Trautwein way of doing business. Shanahan loves the way Trautwein challenges both the entire offensive line and each player individually. Not only does he get in their heads, but he’s hands on with the way he demonstrates proper technique.

“We're leaning on him to get us better and stuff, and he knows that, and he tells us all the time,” Shanahan said. “Like, that’s what drives him. That's what wakes him up in the morning. He gets up at, like, 4 o'clock and goes to work out, and then he eats and does all that. He's a big nutrition guy … at the end of the day, he's going to do what he has to do for this place, and I totally agree with him, and I'm right behind him on that. Yeah, I think he just he wants to see me just keep working on my technique. I feel like no matter what, like no matter how good a rep is, like there's always something you can work on. And that's like the biggest thing about him.

“Like you could win a rep flat out, but he'll say, oh, your first step has to get here and your hand has to get here, and that’s kind of the thing of just being a student of the game. That's the thing I love about Coach Traut is that there's always someone you can get better at. You can have the best rep known to mankind, but he would see someone and be like, oh, you have to bring your left foot with you on your set and stuff like that. So, I mean, the biggest thing with him is just how technical he is, and I feel like that's what makes him, like, such a great coach.”

TJ Shanahan is finally at the place he always wanted to be (Florida),  coached by a former Gator great who happens to be the only left tackle in Gator history who started for two national champions (Phil Trautwein), who is almost a clone of the offensive line coach he admires most (Steve Addazio). Best of all, he gets to wear number 67, the same number worn by his cousin (Jon Halapio), who earned his bones mauling Florida opponents. There have been twists, turns, injuries, disappointments and the usual carousel of coaches hired and fired. If an astrophysicist were to study this dream come true journey he might conclude that stars and planets have aligned.