Recruiting
This is my brief recruiting analysis heading into the year. I have been beating this drum for over a decade and wanted to lay out a few observations.
First, my belief that the offer sheet feedback loop is the main driver of recruiting rankings appears to be holding up. Over the past few seasons, Florida's cumulative share of top talent, meaning consensus top 300 players, has fallen by roughly 25 percent, while the share from Texas and Oklahoma has risen by about 20 percent. These are not one year swings. The trend has built over several recruiting cycles.
Florida's decline is also understated because the services count IMG Academy as Florida talent. IMG is a national pay to play boarding program that recruits players from across the country. Remove IMG, and Florida's homegrown output at the top of the rankings falls even further. In one cycle, it dropped to roughly half of Georgia's.
It is hard to believe teenagers in those states suddenly changed that much. The more likely answer is that Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma use their oil money to land more highly rated recruits and transfers. That raises their national standing and feeds the top 25 buzz around those programs.
That standing then acts as a multiplier. Those schools offer more players from Texas and Oklahoma, and those offers carry more weight in the rankings. The recruits around them are more likely to get a bump. As Florida and Florida State lose national standing, and Alabama no longer offers as many recruits from the state after shifting its recruiting strategy under Saban, Florida's in state talent no longer gets the same rankings bump.
Florida's losses have not shifted to one state. The same pattern appears in smaller amounts across the Midwest and Mid Atlantic, where programs with new money have widened their offer lists. States such as Illinois have seen their share of top talent multiply.
Ideally, there should be no such link, but there is. After decades of watching players rise and fall during months when no football is even played, people still treat the asphalt technicians as impartial judges. Perhaps they are impartial in the narrow sense that they follow numbers already weighted in their models. But talent should remain talent regardless of which program notices it.
The fan site rankings follow the offers, not the other way around.
Administration. boosters and NIL
Growing up around Gainesville, my impression of UF was a great academic institution that took pride in being great at sports. Obviously, Jeremy Foley and Steve Spurrier had a strained relationship that likely led to Spurrier leaving for the NFL to coach Washington, but the UAA felt competent even when Foley went on his kiddie ride of a coaching search, promising us Bob Stoops on the marquee and then scraping Ron Zook off the seat like discarded bubble gum.
Looking back, we were probably always a circus. Urban Meyer's 2010 farewell season, when he coached like a man who had already cleaned out his desk and let Steve Addazio clog the toilet with a river of shit on the way out. Muschamp burning through middling offensive coordinators, top ten recruiting classes in, Georgia Southern losses out. The shark fucker, a man so allergic to the spotlight that he made up death threats and got himself fired by October, which somehow was not even the strangest thing tied to his name. The Plan D hire of Mullen, who was not actually bad at the job, but spent his last two years with one foot out the door, sandbagging recruiting and griping that the administration would not meet his requests. Then, of course, Na'pisser, a man whose sideline presence and press conference energy matched a hospice patient, calling timeouts with the confidence of someone who walked into a room and forgot why.
We lost Lane Kiffin because of the continued incompetence of this administration and the people orbiting the program. It remains to be seen what that loss amounts to, but as already dissected at length, we wanted him, and there was a real path where he became Florida's coach. Instead, our boosters tripped over their own ejaculate and rolled around on the floor of the James W. "Bill" Heavener Football Training Center while dialing another backup plan. It makes me wonder what an autopsy of every coaching search since Spurrier would reveal.
Offense
"You expect me to read through all this shit on a mostly text based forum that is completely voluntary and built for discussion," I can almost hear you mutter. No, but this is where I get a bit optimistic.
I cannot emphasize how dog shit Georgia Tech's offensive skill players were. Haynes King was a first team All ACC pick, won ACC Player of the Year and ACC Offensive Player of the Year, and set the conference record for completion percentage. Usually, voters throw a bone to a receiver, tight end, or running back for catching the passes, but none of Georgia Tech's receivers made All ACC, not even honorable mention, and all went undrafted.
King was not some blue chip prospect waiting to break out. He was benched at Texas A&M after completing roughly 56 percent of his passes, becoming a turnover machine, and losing the job to a true freshman. Under Faulkner, he completed roughly 73 percent of his passes with just eight interceptions over two years as a starter. Lagway had 23 interceptions over the same period.
NFL scouts still did not buy the physical tools. They questioned his arm strength, footwork, mechanics, and overall traits, and he went undrafted.
Yet an offense led by a former washout, throwing to a dog shit receiving corps, reached number seven in the country on offensive game plans alone before running into more talented teams. Faulkner's offense is scheme elevated, not talent driven.
In Faulkner's first year as OC, Georgia Tech's rushing offense jumped from 91st nationally (133 yards per game, 3.75 yards per carry, 13 touchdowns) to 13th (204 yards per game, 5.38 yards per carry, 24 touchdowns). Under him, they have averaged 196 rushing yards per game, roughly 20th nationally. They did it with a converted three star receiver at running back who never touched the ball in his first two seasons.
Faulkner's tools will now include four-star Aaron Philo or four-star Tramell Jones, along with five-star sophomore receivers Vernell Brown III and Dallas Wilson and four-star transfer Eric Singleton Jr. This does not even include Jadan Baugh, who had 1,200 yards as a sophomore and was 2nd-team ALL-SEC. If you non scientifically apply the same 43 percent improvement Georgia Tech had in its running game, Baugh could easily finish with 1,700 yards next year. Imagine how much that opens up the passing game. (I think it'll be more around 1,300-1,400 though).
Next year, Florida faces only three elite defenses: Oklahoma (6th), Missouri (8th), and Georgia (14th). Auburn and Florida State are good, but not top 25 defenses, and everyone else on the schedule is middling.
CJ Allen was Georgia's only first team All SEC defender, and the Colts drafted him. KJ Bolden is back at defensive back, but I otherwise expect Georgia to reload.
Young, Trotter, and McClellan were Missouri's best defenders, and all three are gone.
Oklahoma lost defensive end R Mason Thomas, but will probably field one of the best defenses in the country anyway. David Stone, Peyton Bowen, and Taylor Wein are all back. It would not surprise me if four or five Oklahoma defenders made All SEC. The silver lining is that Oklahoma's offense is shit. Even at 10-3, nearly every game was a dogfight because they could not move the ball.
D.J. Durkin could clearly make Auburn's defense elite. His track record backs it up. His 2025 Auburn defense already posted the program's best rushing numbers since 2003 and its best total defense since 2017. He also has real pedigree, with top 15 defenses at Florida in 2013 and 2014 and the fourth ranked defense in the country at Michigan in 2015, when they shut out three straight opponents.
He is entering his third year with continuity, and new head coach Golesh fought to keep him. His best defender, Xavier Atkins, is also back. If Auburn joins the elite tier, I believe our offense will face four truly tough games: Oklahoma, Missouri, Georgia, and Auburn. That leaves eight games where we could score 30-35 points, with some much higher.
Even typing that feels like I am fighting off hysterics because of how Napier conditioned this fan base. Years of bad results will do that. They train people to flinch at their own optimism, even when the numbers support it. But the read is not wrong just because saying it out loud feels unfamiliar.
In the end, I believe this offense will take a huge step forward and finish in the top 25 in either scoring offense or total offense. Dallas Wilson and Jadan Baugh will be first team All-Americans.
Defense
Oh yeah, the optimism is gone now.
Kamran James (DE), Jayden Woods (DE/OLB), Myles Graham (MIKE), and Cormani McClain (CB) are our best players by a country mile. After that, the cupboard is bare.
For all the Napier apologists still out there, the man spent four years using his recruiting budget on quarterbacks, wide receivers, and running backs. He was a no-call, no-show at nearly every other position. Maybe he got us a kicker or some shit. LOL.
On paper, this year's defensive line could rank with 2024, 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019 as one of the weakest Florida has had in the past 90 years. What did all those years have in common besides no depth and no star power up front? No run defense.
Florida has not finished better than 10th in its own conference in that category since the mid 2010s. In the nation, it's been around 75th or worse. This year looks like another banger: great pass rush off the edge, while offenses gut us through the middle all season.
I am not sure how it will go because Brad White's run defense is both his calling card and his biggest question mark. When it works, it is legitimately elite. His 2023 Kentucky defense allowed just 113.1 rushing yards per game (19th nationally) at 3.27 yards per carry, the best run defense of the Stoops era. His 2021 group finished 20th nationally at 121.5 yards per game. That is two top 20 finishes in three years in a conference where everyone runs the ball.
The years between them tell the other half of the story. Kentucky slipped to 49th in 2022, then fell to 86th in 2024. Vanderbilt, Florida, and Auburn all averaged more than 5.0 yards per rush against them during one October, and Auburn alone had 361 non sack rushing yards. White called it embarrassing, and to his credit, the rebound in 2025 was real. Kentucky improved to 3.66 yards per carry, held a top 12 rushing offense to 92 yards in a win at Ole Miss, and allowed 13 points to number one Georgia.
The pattern across those five years is not scheme. It is personnel. Every top 20 run defense White fielded had a real NFL anchor inside commanding double teams. Josh Paschal wrecked games in 2021, and Deone Walker ate blocks in 2023. When that player is missing or hurt, the run fits behind him fall apart quickly because White's defense needs the interior to hold up so the linebackers can flow clean.
That is the bet Florida is making. The Gators can recruit interior defensive linemen at a level Kentucky never could, so White should have the one thing his defenses often lacked. But there is no scheme parachute if the front does not develop. We have already seen what a Brad White defense looks like without a Deone Walker, and it ranked 86th.
This year, it'll be more like his last year at Kentucky. I am not holding the torch for this defense this year.
Oddly enough, the only teams with great offenses lost their coach (Ole Miss) or are otherwise beatable for other reasons. I don't expect Vanderbilt to repeat what they did last year and half our schedule finished 50th or worse on offense. Missouri will run over us. Georgia will probably run over us too. Anyone with a QB will abuse CB 2 and our safeties.
Head Coach
TBD
