Florida Gators 2025 Recruiting Class

[Escambia94]

Class ranking:
#17 - 1/20/2024
#62 - 7/22/2024
#23 - 8/25/2024
#51 - 9/25/2024
#38 - 11/20/2024
#18 - 11/25/2024
#15 - 11/29/2024
#12 - 12/01/2024
The following recruits have made at least one official visit.

Name	Pos	Grade	School	Commitment Date	De-commitment Date
Malik Autry​	DL​	98​	Auburn​	​	​
Caleb Cunningham​	WR​	98​	Alabama​	​	​
Solomon Thomas​	OL​	98​	FSU​	​	​
Trey McNutt​	S​	98​	​	​	​
Vernell Brown III​	WR​	94​	Florida​	07/21/24​	n/a​
Tavion Wallace​	LB​	94​	Arkansas​	​	​
Jakaleb Faulk​	EDGE​	94​	Auburn​	​	​
Javion Hilson​	EDGE​	94​	FSU​	​	​
Jalen Wiggins​	EDGE​	93​	Florida​	01/15/24​	n/a​
Hylton Stubbs​	S​	93​	Miami​	​	​
Donovan Olugbode​	WR​	93​	Missouri​	​	​
Lagonza Hayward​	S​	93​	​	​	​
Cedric Works​	EDGE​	93​	Kentucky​	​	​
Andrew Olesh​	TE​	93​	Michigan​	​	​
Ben Hanks Jr​	CB​	93​	​	08/16/24​	​
Ziyare Addison​	OL​	92​	Oregon​	​	​
Peyton Joseph	OL	92​			04/18/24​
Ty Jackson​	LB​	91​	​	​	​
Bryce Fitzgerald​	S​	91​	​	​	​
Tavaris Dice​	OL​	91​	​	​	​
Cortez Mills​	WR​	91​	Oklahoma​	​	​
Micah Debose​	OL​	91​	Alabama​	​	​
Myron Charles​	DL​	91​	FSU​	​	​
Antwann Hill​	QB​	91​	Memphis​	​	​
Waltez Clark​	RB​	90​	Florida​	09/16/23​	n/a​
Myles Johnson​	LB​	90​	Florida​	07/10/24​	n/a​
Jaylan Morgan​	S​	90​	Georgia​	​	​
Demetres Samuel Jr	S	90​		07/31/24​
Joshua Moore​	WR​	89​	Florida​	06/26/24​	n/a​
Naeshun Montgomery​	WR​	89​	​	08/25/24​	08/25/24​
Christian Gass​	LB​	89​	Tennessee​	​	​
Joseph Mbatchou	DL	89​		07/31/24
Caden Piening​	TE​	88​	UCF​	​	​
Hollis Davidson​	TE​	88​	Auburn​	​	​
John Mills​	OL​	88​	Texas​	​	​
Jarquez Carter​	DL​	88​	Ohio State​	​	​
Kaylib Singleton​	CB​	88​	Rutgers​	​	​
Tae’shaun Gelsey​	TE​	87​	Florida​	06/29/24​	n/a​
Micah Jones​	TE​	87​	Florida​	06/21/24​	n/a​
Chad Gasper​	RB​	87​	Florida​	05/10/24​	n/a​
Josiah Abdullah​	GA​	87​	Florida​	01/14/24​	06/03/24​
Alex Asparhuhov​	PT​	82​	Alabama​	​	​
Jeramiah McCloud​	DL​	80​	Florida​	05/02/24​	n/a​
Hayden Craig​	PT​	80​	Florida​	06/12/24​	n/a​

 

[DRU2012]

Class ranking:
#17 - 1/20/2024

• Jalen Wiggins James Rickards (Tallahassee, FL)
  6-4.5 / 245 Commit 1/15/2024 DL
  
  
• Waltez Clark Plant (Tampa, FL)
  6-1 / 194 Commit 9/16/2023 RB
  
  
• Josiah Abdullah Woodward Academy (Atlanta, GA)
  5-10 / 175 Commit 1/14/2024 WR

ADD "VB3"!!!
We'd been (in numbingly slow-but-steady fashion) adding to this class, while admittedly for the most part still focusing on 2024...But with this big "must have" (for a LOT of reasons) we have begun to fully transition to 2025 on the recruiting trail. All the MORE reason we must somehow at least do well enough in the season at hand to get Billy off that "hot seat" so that the building resurgence can go on.
(I put that as "low key quietly" as I could; of course, what I'd LOVE to see is the kind of "shock the WORLD" turn-around against this "killer schedule" everyone is so sure is beyond our inept grasp that ERASES all that "Napier is GONE" stuff once and for all.)

 

[Escambia94]

As of July 2022, the class is ranked a paltry #62 and would need to add its top 6 uncommitted recruits who have visited just to break into the top 10. If the Gators added all uncommitted recruits, the class would be around #8. This means that Florida would need to flip a few recruits in order to finish in the top 10. They would also need to flip 3 five-stars just to break into the top 5, or 10 blue chips to top Ohio State.

 

[DRU2012]

Well, at least we just got back our ace-recruiter to maybe give us a chance at creeping back into the race. Even with a relatively strong 2024 season, it will be steadily improving TALENT AND DEPTH that gets us to "The Promised Land".
I don't know when we'll get there--but of course THAT'S THE PLAN: The dream, the goal...always is, always has been. It really appears in retrospect that until Napier, none of the Coaches since Meyer really grasped that upon taking the job. It's just that things were in such progressively deeper disarray as the years went by that by the time Dan ("We'll worry about recruiting after the season") Mullen had been given HIS walking papers, talent wise this program had fallen to 2nd-tier-in-the-SEC status, and is only NOW really beginning to heave itself up out of the muck.

 

[Escambia94]

Since beating LSU the Gators have gained the following commitments:

- QB Tramell Jones (Former FSU commit)
- DL Stephon Shivers (Former UGA commit)
- OL Daniel Pierre Louis (Former FSU commit)

Class ranking has risen from #51 to #38. Still not good enough, but it is progress.

 

[DRU2012]

Signs are relatively good compared to where we started here, though. Lot of buzz stirring out there. If we can flip a couple more of these 5-star kids xhosinv belated interest after Saturday, we MIGHT get ourselves reasonably close to that mythical "Top Ten".

 

[Escambia94]

Billy Napier in the last 3 weeks:

Four-Star DL Joseph Mbatchou flipped from Texas
Four-Star OL Tavaris Dice flipped from Auburn
Four-Star EDGE Jayden Woods flipped from Penn State
Four-Star RB Bryon Louis flipped from FSU
Four-Star QB Tramell Jones flipped from FSU
Four-Star LB Ty Jackson flipped from USC
Three-Star WR Muizz Tounkara flipped from Arizona
Three-Star OL Jahari Medlock flipped from Cincinnati
Three-Star DL Stephon Shivers former Georgia commit
Three-Star IOL Daniel Pierre Louis flipped from FSU

The class ranking has risen from #51 to #12.

 

[DRU2012]

We are on the right track...For whatever it's worth, it appears that we may "land-on-our-feet" recruitingwise for 2025 after all. By all accounts the Portal may similarly help us make 2025 "the year the GATORS were COOL again" after all...
But there is al larger issue, SET of issues, still sitting out there:
To get "back" to matching a certain "standard of excellence" that Billy Napier was supposed to be bringing with him when we raised him from a "budding unknown" who'd only JUST begun to raise his national profile (that of himself, his players at a relatively obscure "outlying Louisiana school", and his own ability to find and develop them), we were counting on the young Coach to somehow work that magic on a program that had wandered far astray from the exciting path of talent and innovation that had marked our best days, by then seemingly buried in subsequent years, a full GENERATION of missteps in well-meaning but nonetheless ill-timed hires that had only led us further astray.
In retrospect, this hire HAD to work if we were to avoid ANOTHER generation of life in the CFB Wasteland...and early on it sure LOOKED as if it certainly had NOT.
I don't know that we had any real grasp of how bad things really were, how FAR BACK to that "Main Road", how much hard work and CHANGE this program would have to go through in order to be what we expected ourselves to BE--or how huge the changes in the rules and culture of modern college football were going to pose, CONTINUE to pose, in terms of achieving those goals.
Maybe WE THOUGHT that it would simply be a matter of getting in a guy who took RECRUITING a little more seriously than Dan Mullen obviously DIDN'T. Um, wrong.
It was, and IS, a whole lot more complicated than that...It is, and continues to BE, a long, hard and twisted road, with both rules and fundamental LANDSCAPE changing around us from year to year. NO ONE was going to simply come in and be the "perfect fit", know JUST what to do before these things even happened.
BUT, it is beginning to LOOK like maybe we got as close to "the right man for the job", THIS job, as we could have hoped for, given the times and circumstances.
It might have been somewhat of a fluke, if it turns out indeed to be the case; if so, so be it.
That IS how these things go, if and when they do.
I don't know that we aren't still only halfway THROUGH an even LONGER "era in purgatory". All of CFB may still just be in the early stages of its OWN "Toral Rebuild" that it may or may NOT EVER fully recover from--not in any recognizable form that old-school fans and alumni long for or will ultimately recognize.
We can only hope--and I continue to believe--that not only is that the aim of these changes, but that we are now within reasonable striking distance of reestablishing the sport's strong and exciting identity once more.
But there remain enormous pitfalls, the largest having to do with the whole idea of what is currently lumped together under the general rubric, "Pay For Play".
Personally, I would much prefer they "re-identify" this as "revenue-sharing"...At least TRY and distance Learning Institutions from becoming "The NFL Developmental League"...And THAT is as far into "politics" and/or "philosophical semantics" as I ever hope to GO here!
Let us get back to PLAYING FOOTBALL:
CHANGE that GODAWFUL overtime setup to START with, for example! Simply "APPLY LOGIC" in dealing with that and a host of other topics, large and small: LET FOOTBALL PEOPLE, former Coaches, players and longtime COLLEGE FOOTBALL folks get together to work on these issues--I ASSURE y'all they will come up with better, more satisfactorily workable solutions than the ones we've been getting foisted upon us of late.