Who will be the Gators surprise players in 2023?

Jan. 26, 2023

A few thoughts to jump start your Wednesday morning:

Fall camp begins for Billy Napier and the Gators this weekend with an August 31 season opener in Salt Lake against Utah looming large. Florida’s roster is dramatically different than it was when camp opened last year. Most of the names penciled in as starters are familiar, but starters alone don’t win big in the Southeastern Conference. Here is a position-by-position breakdown with players the Gators will need to surprise us with their productivity if a 7-8 win season is to be achieved.

Quarterback: The obvious answer is Graham Mertz. If he’s good, the Gators will be good. He doesn’t have to be great, just good enough to navigate the game plan and implement it on the field without major difficulties.

Running back: Montrell Johnson Jr. and Trevor Etienne are one of college football’s elite 1-2 punches although you wouldn’t know it from the preseason mags. The surprise guy is Cam Carroll, the Tulane transfer who ran for 1,217 yards and 15 touchdowns combined in the 2020-21 seasons. He was injured last year. He can catch the ball out of the backfield and he destroys blitzing linebackers in pass protection.

Wide receiver: Ricky Pearsall is the proven commodity who is going to have a big season and everyone raves about freshmen Andy Jean, Aidan Mizell and Eugene Wilson III, all of whom can fly. The guy who has a chance to really turn it on is sophomore Caleb Douglas. He’s big (6-3, 202), deceptively fast and will benefit enormously from a season being coached by Billy Gonzales. In fact, every UF receiver will be better because of Billy G.

Tight end: Dante Zanders is a slimmed down 245 and Jonathan Odom will be a regular contributor, but the breakout guy is going to be redshirt freshman Arlis Boardingham (6-3, 245), who can play in the slot, hand in the dirt or out wide. He used a redshirt freshman year to put on some muscle. He can be the mismatch guy that Billy Napier loves at the tight end position.

Offensive line: Austin Barber has NFL written all over him. Baylor transfer Micah Mazzccua looks like he just beat up everyone in a bar fight. Kingsley Eguakun has the demeanor of a coach in the middle. The guy who will surprise everyone is Alabama transfer Damieon George Jr. He would have started on the inside at Bama this year, but he’ll play right tackle at UF and he’s going to be VERY good.

Defensive line: Transfers Cam Jackson (from Memphis) and Caleb Banks (from Louisville) bring beastly size and mobility to the D-line, but the guy who’s going to prove invaluable is sophomore Chris McClellan. He has added 20 pounds of muscle (325 now) and can handle either of the defensive tackle positions. He’s quick enough that when the Gators want to go with a monster 4-man front, he can play one of the ends.

EDGE: Everybody from Phil Steele to Pro Football Focus is predicting a big season out of Princely Umanmielen, but the guy who’s going to surprise everyone when Princely catches his breath on the sideline is freshman Kelby Collins. There is a reason he was considered the No. 3 recruit out of the state of Alabama last year. Alabama, Georgia, LSU and Clemson all wanted him, too. He’s 6-4, 275, still growing and a beast when he gets the corner on an offensive tackle.

Linebacker: Teradja Mitchell brings size (245), experience and leadership. Shemar James is the future and a healthy Derek Wingo is going to be a constant in the rotation. Houston transfer Mannie Nunnery is going to be the surprise guy. He was the National Special Teams Player of the Year in 2021 at Houston when he blocked two punts and three kicks. He can rush the passer but more importantly, he can cover tight ends one-on-one and backs out of the backfield.

Corner: This is a contract year for Jason Marshall Jr. who will play in the NFL in 2024. Devin Moore is going to be a physical cover guy who makes it tough for wide receivers to get off the line. Jaydon Hill and Jalen Kimber are fine cover guys. The surprise will be freshman Ja’Keem Jackson, who plays corner like the outstanding wide receiver he was in high school. He’s got a nose for the football and isn’t afraid to strike someone.

Safety: Getting R.J. Moten (6-0, 219) to transfer in from Michigan was huge. Moten, Miguel Mitchell (6-1, 219) and Kamari Wilson (6-0, 220) will give the Gators big, fast and very physical safeties who can cover and hit. The surprise is going to be Ja’Markis Weston, the former wide receiver. He’s 6-3, 232 and is still learning to play defense, but he could be that guy in the nickel packages who can handle big guys in the slot or motion tight ends. He will also be a demon on special teams.

Special teams: Jeremy Crawshaw would have finished second in the nation in punting if he had enough attempts last year. Adam Mihalek hit three field goals of 50 or more yards, but he wasn’t consistent. This year, Mihalek will give way to Trey Smack, who spent last year kicking off. This year he gets to show why he was a 5-star kicker coming out of high school.

Country cousins hold their media days

Think of this as only in the ACC, which has begun its annual media days in Charlotte. Mario Cristobal, the head coach at The Ewe, actually said this yesterday: “If Mr. (Lionel) Messi takes the chance to come to Miami to grow his brand, why wouldn’t any player in the country not come to Miami?” Well, a last place soccer team was willing to shell out enough money to bail some Third World nations out of debt by bringing in an aging superstar who can’t speak English. Miami, meanwhile, is playing in a stadium an overnight hike from its campus in what is soon to amount to a Third World football league called the Atlantic Coast Conference. The ACC hopes to be distributing $45 million a year consistently by 2026. By that time the Southeastern Conference will be good for somewhere between $90 and $100 million because (a) Greg Sankey is the commissioner, (b) good football that people want to watch on television is played in the SEC and (c) as much as everyone in the ACC begs them, Notre Dame will stay independent.

Translation: The best football players in the country are going to go play in a league where there are seven stadiums larger than the largest in the ACC, nine once Texas and Oklahoma join; a league where every single stadium is on campus; a league that consistently sends more players to the National Football League; and a league that will have the money and resources to remain the shining city on the hill while the ACC continues to wither into obscurity. Not Miami.

SEC Media Days attracted more than 1,200 writers, reporters and broadcasters from every corner of the country. The ACC may attract half that many.

NCAA expected to slap Harbaugh on the wrist

The NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, is expected to break out its silk gloves to slap Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh on his non-throwing wrist for allegedly making false statements to investigators looking into recruiting violations. Per Ari Wasserman of The Athletic, Harbaugh bought hamburgers for some recruits with his own money then wasn’t forthcoming with the NCAA, the result of which is an expected 4-game suspension. That may seem like a lot except it’s (a) the Big Ten and (b) the first four games are East Carolina, UNLV, Bowling Green and Rutgers. Harbaugh could probably hold a Coach for a Day competition among the student body to come up with someone capable of winning those four games.

The NCAA is willing to suspend a coach four games for buying burgers with his own money who thinks so little of the investigators that he says something that’s either an outright lie or misleading. Shame on Jimmy H. And yet, Tennessee doesn’t get a postseason ban despite more than 200 NCAA recruiting violations and LSU doesn’t get a postseason ban even though one of its boosters embezzled a half million dollars from a hospital to give to a recruit?

Excuse my laughter.

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: In the immortal words of the late senator from Alabama, the honorable Howell Heflin, “I (pronounced ah) am perplexed!”

We have competing bills in the United States Senate, one sponsored by Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama), the other by Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) and Cory Booker (D-New Jersey). Both of them attempt to tackle name, image and likeness (NIL) and transfers. Both of them allow the NCAA to pre-empt state laws that deal with NIL and both of them try to give the NCAA some teeth to enforcement.

So, here we have a Senate that never met a dollar it couldn’t borrow from a foreign government to spend on such wonderful things as why Southerners use the word ain’t (I’m not making this up … the answer was because we Southerners always have) trying to give the NCAA teeth. It is a sad, sad state of affairs when an organization that is supposed to be headed by the brightest among us isn’t smart enough to deal effectively with its own problems. Instead of hiring some folks capable of figuring things out, the NCAA has instead turned to an organization (the United States Congress) that consistently proves incapable of anything more than gridlock and division.

Tell me when the NCAA has actually done anything that truly benefitted college athletics over the long haul? The NCAA has always been about short term solutions that wore out in a hurry, leaving in their wake bigger problems than the ones they intended to solve in the first place. Tell me also when our Congress last decided it should work together to deal with the myriad of problems faced by our country rather than polarize the citizens? In Congress, everybody has an answer to everything, but for some odd reason none of its answers get to the core of the problems.

The NCAA has problems. Everybody knows that. The NCAA has problems that need solving. Nothing new there, either. I’m of the opinion that most of the problems facing college sports today have their roots in the do-gooders at the NCAA attempting to “level the playing fields” by trying to make rules that apply just fine for the have nots of the sports world apply to those with the means for a bigger and better product. NIL is out of control in its current state and it definitely needs some parameters placed on it, but do we need politicians who can’t stop dipping into Social Security to pay for their own nonsensical pork barrel projects getting a foot in the college athletics door?

I am indeed perplexed at the willingness to turn college sports over to politicians whose parties require them to spend half their days in Washington on the phone raising money for re-election. My grandmother, who grew up in Alachua County, used to complain that nothing ever got done in Gainesville because the same old politicians kept getting re-elected by the same voters who believed the same old lies.

Nothing ever gets done in Washington, so why does anyone think Washington has the answers to the NCAA’s problems? If either of these bills or something similar passes, government, which rarely gets anything right, is going to begin a gradual takeover of college sports. If you think college sports need real answers to big problems now, just wait until the government is in charge and we have bureaucrats who never played a sport making the regulations.