Read & Reaction 2023 Florida Gators Preseason Magazine: Pre-order NOW
Pre-order NOW!
Launch day is Memorial Day (May 29). To get your magazine by then, pre-order by May 1 and get a discount!
The magazine is going to contain over 70 pages dedicated to your Florida Gators! What better Father’s Day (or late Mother’s Day) gift than the gift of reading about their favorite team and learning about where the Gators stand in 2023 and what to expect out of head coach Billy Napier in his second season at the helm?
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Catching Georgia: April Recruiting Update
I’ve written a lot about recruiting in April over the past five years or so. In just about every case, I’ve been writing about whether panic is warranted given the state of the current recruiting class. Thankfully, Billy Napier has ended that streak.
With the commitment of safety Xavier Filsaime during the spring game, Billy Napier now has four players in the top-44 of the 247Sports composite rankings. That’s after having one player ranked that high in both of the 2022 (Kamari Wilson, #44) and 2023 (Kelby Collins, #42) classes.
This is a major step forward in recruiting.
The job isn’t done, but since I’ve taken the time in the past to evaluate classes that were lagging behind, I thought it only fair to evaluate one that’s surging ahead. Suffice it to say that if Napier is able to keep up this level of recruiting, he’s not going to be comparing himself to Kentucky or South Carolina or even Tennessee.
He’s going to be measuring himself against Georgia and Alabama.
The 2024 class as it stands
Currently, Florida has only seven commits in the 2024 class. That might not seem like a lot, but if we go back to the 2023 class for comparison, you’ll see why that’s a big deal.
On April 5th last year, Napier only had one commit – Aaron Gates, the 276th ranked overall player – who wound up dropping to a ranking of 335 and is one of the less heralded defensive back prospects coming into Gainesville this year.
By June 25, Napier had added Isaiah Nixon (#194), Gavin Hill (#259), Knijeah Harris (#389), Creed Whittemore (#467), Bryce Lovett (#558), Tyree Patterson (#712) and Tommy Kinsler (#965). Those rankings changed a bit from June to national signing day, but they amounted to an average player rating of 88.9 and Nixon, Whittemore, Patterson and Kinsler all decommitted.
And even by August 2, Napier’s 2023 class contained just one top-100 commit, four commits ranked 101-200 and four more ranked 201-300. The average player rating was 91.14 and it was pretty clear that a top-10 class was going to take a huge finish.
If we do the same analysis for Florida’s class right now that I did for the Gators last April or for the entire class, the difference is night and day.
Florida has already doubled-up its number of top-100 commits from last season and has a 71 percent top-300 percentage. The average player rating is more than two points above last season as well. If all Napier did was close out this class with exactly the class he had last year, it is leaps and bounds better.
Rival Comparison
Of course, none of this matters if you’re not catching up – or at least matching – your main rivals. For Florida, that means FSU, LSU, Georgia and Alabama.
I was actually tempted to leave FSU off as a rival. After all, they haven’t been much of a rival on the recruiting trail recently. Even with Napier’s struggles, Mike Norvell and company finished behind the Gators’ 2023 class in number of commits, point total and average player rating.
Still, these are teams Florida plays, or hopes to play, every year. And so it is important to metric where the Gators stand against each of them.
I’ve often talked about recruiting being tiered. Especially early on in a cycle it can be difficult to compare classes as apples-to-apples, but you can get a feel for what tier they are in. Well, looking at these main rivals, it’s pretty clear which tier Florida is in: Alabama’s and Georgia’s.
A couple of caveats: Both the Bulldogs (3) and Tide (2) have more 5-star recruits than Florida (1). But given the number of top-50 guys Florida already has in the fold, that’s really being nitpicky. Also, it is still really early and as I mentioned, nearly half of Florida’s commits from June decided to decommit. I’ll be much more comfortable making this comparison in August, but at this point you couldn’t ask for much more from Napier.
Finishing Strong
Florida currently ranks second overall in the country in average player rating, tied with Georgia and slightly behind Alabama. That’s it. There isn’t anyone else with a higher quality class than Florida.
That’s particularly significant because Napier put together a relatively strong class in 2023, he just couldn’t close the deal on elite prospects like Samson Okunlola or Cormani McClain. Had those two been added to the fold, Florida’s point total would have been 286.6, or good enough for seventh nationally.
But the Gators already have elite talent in the fold with DJ Lagway, Myles Graham, Adarius Hayes and now Xavier Fulsaime for the 2024 class. They’re also still putting on the full-court press with guys like receiver Jeremiah Smith (2nd nationally, an Ohio State commit), edge rusher Colin Simmons (3rd nationally out of Duncanville, TX) and cornerback Charles Lester III (18th nationally out of Sarasota).
Hit on any one of those guys and it would likely be difficult for this class to fall outside of the top-5. Hit on two of them, and you’re talking about the top-3 classes that are necessary to compete year-in-year-out in the SEC.
I’ve had folks tell me that because of NIL, the third recruiting year is now the “bump” class. I don’t think that’s what’s happening here though. Rather, I think that Florida’s discontent with the Rashada situation coupled with changes in Florida law have allowed them to ensure that the NIL portion of their program is aligned with the rest of the recruiting apparatus. It’s amazing how much of a difference that makes.
What that means is that if Napier can finish out this class as strongly as he’s started it, Florida is going to be back amongst the elite in the recruiting world, a necessary prerequisite to winning big in College Football.
It’s still going to require patience. After all, just about every coach to win the SEC since 2000 had an absolute monster second recruiting class (average national ranking of 4.7). Napier was not able to secure that piece, which means it is likely going to take him longer than it took Saban or Smart to start knocking on the championship door like they did in their second seasons.
But by the looks of the 2024 class so far, Napier is going to get a chance to knock.