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Florida Gators

Whatever else happens, 5-star QB DJ Lagway is Florida’s most important recruiting win in over a decade

Neil Blackmon

By Neil Blackmon

Published:


It would have been easier for DJ Lagway to leave.

That’s what everyone else seemed to be doing to the Billy Napier and the Florida Gators over the past month.

Why wouldn’t a 5-star quarterback, recently named the 2023 MaxPreps National High School Player of the Year, join them?

After all, the hits kept coming for Napier over the past 2 months, on the field and off of it.

On the field, Florida lost its final 5 games after taking a 5-2 record and momentum into their bye week in late October.

The losses came in all forms and fashions.

A blowout loss to rival Georgia. The failure to get the right personnel on the field before a potential game-winning kick against Arkansas a week later where a penalty cost the Gators 5 yards, and one of the SEC’s best kickers, Trey Smack, pushed the longer kick inches to the right. A loss at LSU that won Jayden Daniels the Heisman Trophy. A brave effort at top-10 Missouri, where Florida had the game all but won only to somehow allow Luther Burden III, the one Missouri receiver you have to cover, to get open in a zone on 4th-and-17. Missouri converted and won by 2 points.

And of course the final game, where the Gators stormed to a 12-0 lead over rival No. 4 FSU in a raucous, sold-out Swamp. With the ball at midfield, Florida looked like they were positioned to build an even bigger lead against a Seminoles team playing its first full game without Jordan Travis. Then Napier called a double flea-flicker behind one of the Power 5’s worst pass blocking offensive lines, gave up a sack and punted. Florida had a stop, but it was negated when a Gators player spit on a Seminole after a play. The Noles converted, scored, and never looked back, winning by 9 points.

The losing mattered.

Suddenly, Florida’s on-field collapse created an off-the-field tailspin.

Social media speculation about Napier’s job security– which SDS accurately reported was never truly in doubt after just 2 seasons– swirled anyway. Florida fans turned on their coach en masse on Twitter, creating a toxic stream of sludge and negativity all too visible to recruits and opposing coaches, who used the fuel as fertile fodder to negatively recruit.

Trevor Etienne, Florida’s best player, hit the transfer portal, frustrated that he had to share carries with another outstanding running back, Montrell Johnson Jr., and tempted by persistent tampering and NIL money offered by Florida’s rivals.

Florida’s recruiting class, ranked in the top 3 nationally for the better part of a year, cratered.

Jamonta Waller, a dominant 5-star defensive end who would have given the Gators their first true edge holder since CeCe Jefferson, flipped to Auburn last month. Xavier Filsaime, a 5-star at a position of dire need, safety, flipped to Steve Sarkisian and Texas days before Early Signing Day, and that was the tip of an iceberg seemingly headed full steam for Napier’s orange and blue Titanic.

Adarius Hayes, a 4-star linebacker who told SDS he’s had Gators posters on his bedroom walls since age 7, flipped to in-state Miami. The Gators never sent Hayes a letter of intent, a sign that they knew he was never coming or that they backed off a top-100 player at another position of serious need. Another 4-star defensive end, North Carolina product Amaris Williams, flipped to Auburn hours later. Finally, 4-star receiver Izaiah Williams of Tampa left the class too, bolting for Mike Elko and Texas A&M.

Through it all, Lagway never wavered. His belief in Napier, Florida Assistant Director of Player Personnel Joe Hamilton, and his relationships with people at Florida kept his heart — and his eyes — firmly fixed on life in Gainesville.

Even as Clemson circled, Texas A&M camped out near his home and Southern Cal pushed relentlessly over the past few weeks, Lagway and his family told anyone that would listen “Florida has nothing to worry about.”

In the end, Lagway’s word was as solid as a Florida live oak.

“He’s just a different kind of kid: a small town, family values, faith and football kid,” an assistant charged with his recruitment at a College Football Playoff winning program told me. “There’s nothing but substance there, and a damn good football player. He can change things for them down there. If he doesn’t, it will surprise me.”

It’s trendy, in an era of instant gratification and the easy exit allure of the transfer portal and its false promises of greener pastures, to take the easy road and call it a “business decision.”

There’s nothing sexy or instantly rewarding about taking a different path. The world doesn’t value loyalty much anymore, and it’s easy to listen to the world when you are 18-years-old and the likes of Dabo Swinney and Lincoln Riley are in your ear and ringing your cell phone to the bitter end.

DJ Lagway is built differently.

He could have left Willis High, a smaller Texas program without a long tradition of success, but stayed anyway and became a district and conference champion.

“He’s a tremendous young man,” Willis High head coach Trent Miller said of his quarterback. “He’s loyal, and he cares about the emotions and feelings of people he surrounds himself with and communicates with and he’s always going to stick with his commitments, even when he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. He did that for us when there were doubts and he’ll prove it again to anyone who has questions or doubts about him at Florida.”

Lagway gives the Gators a can’t-miss future star at the most important position in team sports — quarterback.

Lagway was the best player in the country from a production standpoint in 2024, while playing outstanding high-level Texas competition, and aside from Ohio State wide receiver commitment Jeremiah Smith — it isn’t particularly close. Peep the numbers: 72% completion rate, 4,634 yards, 58 touchdowns, 11.5 yards per attempt. He can run, too, with 957 yards and 16 touchdown runs on just 99 attempts. Lagway averaged 5.7 touchdowns per game — 1 more than some guy named Tim Tebow at Jacksonville’s Nease, 1.2 more than Heisman winner Bryce Young at California’s Mater Dei, and 1.4 more than another Heisman winner, Cam Newton, at Westlake in Atlanta.

At 6-3, 230, he has a huge arm, a college-ready build, and his best ball may be the deep ball, which is the one area Graham Mertz, the incumbent Florida quarterback who seems built for the job of molding Lagway, struggles. Florida will find packages for Lagway in 2024, without rushing him along, thanks to Mertz’s return, which also reduces the pressure on the young man to save the program from the day he enrolls in January.

Whatever happened over the past 2 months and whatever played out on Early Signing Day, Lagway was the guy who mattered most.

Whoever defected Monday and whatever happens with the transfer portal, Lagway was the most important recruiting win for Florida since Tebow inked with Urban Meyer over Alabama in 2006. That commitment changed Florida football forever, and the Gators, in case you’re keeping score at home, have not won a championship since Tebow graduated.

Nothing is guaranteed, of course. Napier, who is under intense pressure as is and faces the nation’s most difficult schedule in 2024, could be gone before Lagway is ready to make a championship impact. There are, without question, other things for Napier and the Gators to address to avoid the program’s 4th consecutive losing campaign.

But anytime you sign the best player available at the most important position in team sports, it’s a heck of a day.

For DJ Lagway and the Gators, a muted celebration is just the beginning.

Much louder, prouder moments likely await.

Neil Blackmon

Neil Blackmon covers Florida football and the SEC for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.

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