Feleipe Franks On Reflection, Lessons and His Time As A Florida Gator

MOBILE, AL—Feleipe Franks stepped to the microphone, his Arkansas Razorbacks helmet off to the side, his ever present smirk knowing and expecting what was about to come.

And he was right.

For the next 10 minutes, the 6-6 NFL prospect took varying questions but the majority of which concerned his time with the Florida Gators.

The former Gators quarterback is at the 2021 Reese’s Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama, hoping to improve his NFL draft stock and represent the Razorbacks. Before his path can move forward however, he has to reflect on where it’s been. And Feleipe Franks path will always be inexplicably intertwined with the Florida Gators.

A redshirt year then two and a half years as a starter for the Gators, Franks was made a scapegoat for the Jim McElwain years then helped usher in the newfound success with Head Coach Dan Mullen and staff. A season ending injury in the early 2019 year meant Franks had to hand the reins over to Kyle Trask. His story from there has been told over and over again, to the point we won’t recap it again here. But feel free to read about it here.

The most important takeaway for Franks from his time at Florida is what he can, well, take away.

“When I went to Arkansas, I had a little reflection book. So when I was at Florida, all the little things that went on, kinda like [shushing the Gator crowd] and all those type of things, really just growing from it I think was important. Not necessarily like, ‘hey I did this or I did that,’ but growing from it, I think was important. And that’s part of it.

“So I had a reflection book that I wrote a bunch of different things down that, ‘how can I get better? How can I improve as a player? As a person, and become the best person and player I can become?”

It’s a practice he took with him from his time as a Gator.

“After a season I would have like, same sort of thing, a reflection, like ‘how can I improve on this season?’ And those are little things, I try to do that to get better and better and really took it to the next step when I was transferring cause I wanna play in the NFL and I wanna play in the NFL for a long time and so it takes, really just the reflection part and being like ‘hey man like how can you get better from all this, how can you grow from this?’

“And so there really wasn’t I would say necessarily a game [at Florida] but really over the span of four years, in a span of like a season those have been reflections that I have done really just to try to get better man, as a leader, as a person, as player and just as a ultimate quarterback.”

The Wakulla, Florida native helped lead Florida to a New Year’s Six Peach Bowl win in 2018 and move the Gators back into perenial Top 10 contention. But he was also a lightning rod during his time in Gainesville. A high-tempered, passionate player, he wasn’t above letting his emotions run his reactions. It made for some interesting moments in an orange and blue uniform. It almost meant that even those who hated him eventually loved him. It also served as a lesson in maturity for Franks, something for which he is eternally grateful.

“I would’t change my career for anything. All those things that happened, it’s made me who I am today. It’s made me set myself aside and say ok these are the things you need to work on and be able to recognize them and work on them and grow from it.”

The reflection journal contains five to 10 pages about his time at Florida, according to Franks, a fact he jokingly ribbed a reporter for asking about.

“What kind of question is that,” he laughed, before humbly answering honestly.

That’s the other thing his time at Florida helped teach the forever Florida Gator product.

"Humility. Humility man. How to be able to say ‘you know what? I’m wrong.’ But at the same time be able to say, ‘how can I grow from it and how can I get better from it.?’ So I think that was important for me. That was important to me to say ‘OK, you did do this’ and recognize it and now shy away from it but at the same time being ‘ok how can I fix this?’ Cause a problem is only a problem till it gets solved. That’s how I kinda approach things and continue to grow really.”