{"id":359691,"date":"2026-08-01T04:58:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T04:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/359691\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T04:58:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T04:58:18","slug":"florida-has-a-rare-luxury-at-quarterback-for-the-current-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/359691\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida has a rare luxury at quarterback for the current era"},"content":{"rendered":"

On an episode of his podcast<\/a> earlier this week, UF beat writer Zack Alboverdi provided a tidbit of reporting towards the end of it about how the Florida staff sees its roster ahead of preseason camp. He said the coaches expect that the starters in all three phases are \u201cgood enough to compete with everybody that they\u2019re going to play\u201d, while also thinking \u201cthey don\u2019t have the depth across the board\u201d that some opponents have.\n<\/p>\n

The latter part shouldn\u2019t be a surprise. There was an enormous amount of roster turnover from last year to this year. When replacing that many players via the transfer portal, you simply can\u2019t import an roster with elite depth in one cycle. Because of financial constraints with how much rev share and NIL money any given school has, recruiting high school players on lower payout figures is required even for the biggest spenders. It\u2019s quite like how with professional sports with rosters larger than a basketball team\u2019s have to build through both free agency and the draft. The pros can\u2019t do it through free agency alone, and college teams can\u2019t do it through the portal alone.\n<\/p>\n

The former part is what caught my attention, though. If that assessment is accurate, it\u2019d be a great place to be for a new head coach in Year 1. If you can be competitive with anyone, provided you\u2019re not missing key players to injury, then there\u2019s no game you can\u2019t win. You still won\u2019t win them all without depth; the staff is right about that. But any given game is in play, and that\u2019s where you want to be this early in a tenure.\n<\/p>\n

Now, Jon Sumrall and his assistants may not be quite right in their judgment. This is Sumrall\u2019s first go-round as a P4 head coach, and despite having been on P4 staffs with a pair of coordinators who just came from P4 staffs, they may not have it quite right. It could go either way, with them too optimistic about the starters, too pessimistic about the backups, or some combination of those between position groupings. Preseason workouts will give them some more evidence to base their decisions on, and we\u2019ll all find out how right they are on Saturdays soon enough.\n<\/p>\n

But for the moment, let\u2019s take as given that the coaches are right in how they assess the roster. If they are correct, then Florida has a rare luxury for the current NIL\/portal era.\n<\/p>\n

Sumrall has said this summer<\/a> that he thinks the team can win with either of Aaron Philo and Tramell Jones at quarterback. That doesn\u2019t mean that both necessarily are the kind of guy who will personally win games the team otherwise wouldn\u2019t. In his characteristic blunt manner, he straight-up said that neither is going to be a Heisman candidate. Rather, he means that neither will cost UF games through not being ready for prime time.\n<\/p>\n

Not a lot of teams can say that about their top two quarterbacks these days. If you have a clear starter, there\u2019s a good chance the best backup(s) will transfer elsewhere for a shot to start and\/or you\u2019ll have a hard time getting a good backup to come in. See how, heading into 2025, Florida couldn\u2019t pull a quarterback better than Harrison Bailey out of the portal to be a backup to DJ Lagway, and Bailey ended up never throwing a pass despite being healthy. However, if you don\u2019t have a clear starter, it\u2019s usually because you don\u2019t have anyone you trust.\n<\/p>\n

Florida ended up in a rare situation due to rare circumstances. Philo did the increasingly customary thing of following his offensive coordinator to a new spot. That\u2019s not the rare thing. What is rare is that both Jones wanted to stick around<\/a> because he\u2019s a born-and-raised Gator from Jacksonville and also the team believed in him so much from the prior year that players vouched for him to the new head coach. Sumrall was wise enough to listen to the team and give Jones a chance, and now I would bet he\u2019s very happy he did so.\n<\/p>\n

After all, you can\u2019t count on your starters staying healthy all season. Quarterback in particular can be a tough spot to stay healthy because of blind side sacks and collapsing pockets and all the small parts of the body that have to be in near-perfect condition to get quality play.\n<\/p>\n

UF hasn\u2019t had a great run of coincident quarterback quality and health in some time. Excluding bowl opt-outs, the last quarterback to start every game for UF was Anthony Richardson in 2022. Even then, though, he wasn\u2019t 100% the whole time. Not even close. Dan Mullen had a couple of years of it with Kyle Trask in 2020 and Feleipe Franks in 2018, but before that you have to go back to Tim Tebow. That\u2019s three seasons in the last 16 where the same guy started every game because he was healthy and not struggling.\n<\/p>\n

It\u2019s entirely possible that the 2026 season will not have the same guy starting every game because of a plan to have one guy start Week 1 against FAU and the other Week 2 against FCS Campbell just to get both some live fire in the new offense before selecting a more permanent starter for Week 3\u2019s road trip to Auburn. Nothing has been announced to that end, but other teams have done similar and it wouldn\u2019t be out of line.\n<\/p>\n

But even setting aside that possibility, it\u2019s just not that likely that either Philo or Jones will start every game. It\u2019s far more probable that, whichever one earns the starting job to begin with, that guy will subsequently not start a game due to injury or falling behind the other in the competition.\n<\/p>\n

With that being the case, you want to have two quarterbacks you feel like you can win with. Sumrall has that feeling. It\u2019s not common these days, and it\u2019s a great feeling to have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On an episode of his podcast earlier this week, UF beat writer Zack Alboverdi provided a tidbit of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-359691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}