GAINESVILLE — There’s a buzz around Gainesville this August, and it’s not just the gnats and mosquitos that have terrorized more than usual this summer thanks to the torrential rains of Hurricane Debby, which rolled through town at the beginning of the month.

It’s not just  “talking season” noise either, though that’s always common this time of year in the town where Heisman Trophy winner and coaching legend Steve Spurrier coined the phrase for what happens in the SEC when football approaches every July and August.

While there’s the usual excited chatter about the coming college football season, this buzz feels different.

This buzz is palpable, focused, encouraged, even ambitious.

At a program that’s suffered 3 consecutive losing seasons for the first time since full integration and is about to play perhaps the most difficult regular-season schedule in the history of college football, maybe the added buzz and excitement is a bit surprising, especially to anyone outside of the Florida football facility. You wouldn’t expect much at a place where the going over/under betting line for the 2024 season is 5.5 wins.

Then again, maybe the buzz makes perfect sense.

After all, “talking season” is the season of perpetual hope, and nothing brings more hope than 5-star, can’t-miss quarterback prospects.

Florida’s most important recruiting victory since Tim Tebow, DJ Lagway is the talk of the town.

This writer is just a one-man sample size, but in only 3 weeks back in Gainesville, I’ve heard Lagway mentioned in conversation at a number of Gainesville institutions, historic haunts and community gathering places, from Ballyhoo Grill to Blue Water Bay to Haile Plantation Publix to the splash pad at Depot Park. In keeping with the “it just means more” theme,  I even heard Lagway mentioned in Prayers of the People attending Holy Eucharist in downtown Gainesville this past Sunday. Florida football, lost in the wilderness for a decade, is ready to be redeemed, and Lagway is a gridiron gift from God.

The accolades Lagway brings are legion. A Gatorade National Player of the Year and High School Heisman winner, Lagway, while playing against high-level Texas high school football competition, threw for 4,634 yards and 58 touchdowns as a senior at Willis High School outside Houston, where he averaged 11.5 yards per attempt with a 72% completion rate. Lagway can run too, tallying 957 yards rushing on just 99 attempts with 16 touchdowns. Lagway averaged 5.7 touchdowns produced per game — numbers that are 1 more than the high school average of the guy he keeps getting compared to in Gainesville, Heisman winner Tim Tebow, and 1.4 more than another former Heisman winner who attended Florida, Cam Newton. 247 Sports analyst Clint Brewster watched Lagway film this summer and quickly predicted he’d join Tebow and Newton as a Heisman Trophy winner one day.

Destined for greatness, the question is how soon is now for Lagway? And can Florida keep him in Gainesville long enough to reap the benefits of winning the recruiting battle?

How much Lagway fits into Florida’s plans in 2024 depends on a confluence of factors, at least 2 of which are largely out of Lagway’s control.

In a perfect world, the Gators could be patient with Lagway, a blessing made possible by the presence of senior Graham Mertz, one of the SEC’s most effective quarterbacks in 2023 and a team captain and unquestioned leader. While it is unlikely Lagway would simply stand on the sideline with a headset and learn this autumn, there’s a learning curve involved in SEC football, and if Florida can integrate Lagway slowly, building and adding to a package designed for him to succeed, that would be optimal.

There’s no better precedent for that formula than at Florida, where Urban Meyer and Dan Mullen utilized an ever-expanding but limited package of plays to integrate Tebow into high level college football in 2006 while honoring the talent and experience of starter Chris Leak.

Leak, even more than Mertz, was a proven commodity, and he remains the program’s all-time leading passer. While fans clamored for more Tebow throughout Florida’s 2006 national championship run, it was Leak who led the Gators on a critical 4th quarter drive to win a scary game in Tallahassee and Leak who won BCS National Championship Game Offensive MVP honors in Florida’s 41-14 rout of Ohio State.

“The role that (Leak) played in just making me comfortable as a college quarterback, and with showing me the value of poise and how to approach things daily, it was super important,” Tebow told SDS last autumn. “It was an ideal way to get used to college football because I could focus on what the coaches asked of me each week. I didn’t have to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders.”

As a freshman, Tebow threw just 33 passes. He played in every game, though, and rushed for 489 yards and 8 TDs, including immense yards in a win over Tennessee and the national championship game, where he ran and threw for a TD.

Mertz, whose adjusted completion percentage of 80.2% last year was No. 2 in the SEC behind only Heisman winner Jayden Daniels, per PFF, should offer Lagway that type of role. The wide receiver room is deeper than 2024, too, which means Mertz, who ranked No. 3 behind only Daniels and Georgia’s Carson Beck in passing success rate, should be more versatile a thrower in 2024. If Mertz can improve on an average depth of target (ADOT) of just 6.8 yards in 2023 this season, the Florida offense, which averaged a respectable 6.1 yards per play a season ago, should be more explosive.

That’s where Lagway’s skill set should come in.

Florida completed just 16 passes of 20 yards or more in 2023, a 10.9% deep ball attempt rate. While some of this is undoubtedly schematic, an adjustment made by Napier to offset a weak offensive line and keep the Florida offense on schedule from a down and distance perspective, some of it reflects a longtime weakness of Mertz as an effective deep ball thrower.

The Gators ranked just 56th nationally a season ago in 20-yard plus “explosive” plays and once you get to 30-yard plus plays, the Gators ranked 90th. Florida was No. 3 in the SEC in passing success rate but 9th in explosive pass play rating.

Success rate is perhaps the most important statistic in the sport offensively, and an area where in most respects, Mertz excels. It measures the success of a play in a given down and distance situation. For example, a 6-yard gain on 2nd-and-8 is successful, whereas a 4-yard bubble screen on 1st-and-10 is not successful. Thus, a successful play is defined as one that gains at least 50% of the yards to go on first down, 70% of the yards to go on 2nd down, or is converted into a first down or score on 3rd or 4th down.

Can Lagway make Florida’s passing game, already quite “successful” in 2023, both “successful” and “explosive”?

In a perfect world, a package for Lagway would focus on that question, allowing Lagway the ability to showcase his rocket arm and deep throwing ability and also keeping defenses honest with an RPO package that the Gators could expand as Lagway’s understanding of college defenses and the Florida playbook grows stronger. Already, Lagway has wowed teammates with big-time deep throws in practice, even as he stumbles occasionally, as he did with what sources told SDS was a forced deep ball interception in a scrimmage over the weekend.

“There’s not much he can’t do with his arm,” tight end Arlis Boardingham told the media. “DJ has a cannon. He’ll launch it. It’s on the money, too.”

If, in a limited but expanding package, Florida can parlay Lagsway’s elite arm strength and accuracy, as well as his ability to extend plays with his legs, into additional explosives, the Gators have a chance to be outstanding offensively.

Unfortunately for Florida, the 2024 Gators do not profile like the 2006 Gators.

Mertz may seem like an ideal mentor, a Chris Leak to Lagway’s Tebow.

But without defensive improvement, the Gators may struggle to win games, and therein lies the proverbial rub.

Anyone who follows the sport in even a cursory manner knows Florida coach Billy Napier enters the 2024 season under pressure thanks to an 11-14 record in his first 2 seasons. Desperation could force Napier’s hand, and the challenge of Florida’s otherworldly schedule could drive the arrival or desperation sooner rather than later.

If Florida stumbles out of the gate, and Napier is facing the prospects of losing his job, will he turn to Lagway sooner, to inject juice into the program and give the fan base a shot in the arm and signal that the future is brighter than the stormy present?

You could forgive Napier for doing that, no matter how unfair it might seem to Mertz, who staked his long-term future on a return to Gainesville and another shot at proving his mettle in the SEC in 2024.

For now, that’s not the plan, no matter how much the noise around Lagway’s 2024 role swells as summer in The Swamp turns to Miami week in the coming days.

“He’s made progress, no question,” Napier said last week when asked about his young quarterback. “I had a conversation with DJ the other day after practice and we said, ‘Hey, that wasn’t perfect but practice day is never perfect.’ But we told him, think about where you are now compared with where you were after the first practice in spring. He’s made tremendous growth. He’s getting better.”

Is getting better enough for the Gators and Lagway in 2024?

We’ll know soon enough.

Until then, that will continue to be what Gators fans talk about, from swimming pools to office water coolers to Sunday services and come Aug. 31, against the Hurricanes in The Swamp.