Is it DJ Lagway or bust for the Gators at quarterback, and as a Playoff contender?
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GAINESVILLE — Unless you’ve been living on the moon or a rural central Florida basement, you might have heard Florida quarterback DJ Lagway has battled injuries over the past couple of seasons.
So persistent are the questions around the 2023 Gatorade National High School Player of the Year that even the most optimistic, good natured, reasonable journalists have expressed concern.
Billy Napier joked with the media this week that Lagway returning to full pad practices with the Gators seemed more of a relief “to y’all in the media” than the Gators, but in fairness, it isn’t the fact Lagway picked up a leg injury just before summer camp, it’s the amount of injuries Lagway’s been dealing with since his senior season at Willis High School just outside of Houston.
Never mind that Lagway missed only 1.5 games due to injury as a freshman in 2024—the same number of games Carson Beck missed due to injury at Georgia in 2024 and Taylen Green missed at Arkansas, mind you.
Set aside, if you will, that DJ Lagway at what he characterized as “75 percent” was good enough to beat a ranked LSU team and snuff out the Playoff dreams of Jaxson Dart and a top-10 Ole Miss squad last November.
Those facts are swallowed up by the noise and chatter that for Florida to truly escape the swampy shadowlands of the college football wilderness in 2025, they’ll need Lagway to do what he hasn’t done since his junior year of high school: stay healthy.
For what it’s worth, I think it’s obviously true that for the Gators to truly reach their College Football Playoff potential, they’ll need No. 2 in blue to be QB1 for a full season. Lagway possesses program-trajectory altering talent and intangibles, the kind of player who changes the fortunes for a head coach and fan base alike. If healthy, Lagway has a genuine chance to join the list of college quarterbacks who delivered on their leadership and talent to become household names: Trevor Lawrence. Tim Tebow. Joe Burrow. Jalen Hurts. You get the idea.
But what if Lagway has to sit a game or 2?
What if, for the third-consecutive season, Florida football sees its Game 1 starting quarterback miss more than 1 game due to injury?
Florida fans will, with some justice, wonder if they remain the object of the football overlords’ scorn after Urban Meyer, Tim Tebow, Percy Harvin and the Swamp Kings ruthlessly (and too often lawlessly) ruled the SEC in the mid and late 2000s. It’s a curse, some Gators will insist, and after nearly 2 decades without a SEC title trophy or Playoff appearance of any kind, it will be difficult to argue. Perhaps the best move would be to put your head on a baseball bat, turn around 3 times, and spit? Alternatively, Florida fans could try hanging water moccasins from a tree. My Grandmama, a third-generation Floridian (that makes me fifth!) told me that will make it rain. I cannot confirm whether that’s true, or whether hanging water moccasins from a live oak tree will break a dreaded football curse, but after the decade-plus Florida’s had, it’s probably worth trying.
The easier path is for Lagway to stay healthy. If that happens, this is a College Football Playoff roster. The SEC is a line of scrimmage league, first and foremost, and Florida has arguably the best offensive line in the SEC, with a returning First-Team All-American at center and an All-American candidate at left tackle. The defensive line, which ranked third in the SEC in sacks and second in havoc rate last November (Florida went 3-2, losing only to Georgia and Texas), is loaded, thanks to the return of Tyreak Sapp, one of the SEC’s best run stoppers and edge setters, and All-SEC defensive tackle Caleb Banks, who trailed only Walter Nolen in havoc created by a SEC defensive tackle last season.
If Lagway is injured, things get more complicated.
The backup quarterbacks are sixth-year collegian Harrison Bailey, who has 5 career starts, 3 of which came as a freshman at Tennessee, and Aidan Warner, a Yale transfer in his second year in the program in Gainesville. Warner played the final 2 and a half quarters against Georgia a season ago after Lagway left with a frightening injury, playing bravely but ineffectively. His lone career start came at Texas a week later and Florida was not competitive, losing 49-17 in a game that somehow felt even more lopsided.
Bailey and Warner have shared QB2 snaps early in summer camp, but at least as of the time of this writing (August 8), Bailey appears to have nudged his way ahead. A former 4-star recruit, Bailey arrives in Gainesville coming off one of the best games of his college career, a 3 TD, 0 interception performance for Louisville in a win over Washington in the Sun Bowl. That’s something, I suppose, but after 5 seasons of college football, Bailey probably is who the film and practices say he is: a backup quarterback.
If it seems like Florida’s quarterback room behind Lagway has uncertainty akin to trying to survive an Everglades swamp filled with snakes and alligators, that’s because things really are that murky.
The silver lining, I suppose, is that the bulk of the SEC is just as uncertain at QB2. Only 5 SEC teams have a quarterback room with 5 or more career Division 1 starts behind the presumed starter: Texas, Texas A&M, LSU, Florida, and Auburn. Only 4 of those programs (Texas A&M, LSU, Florida, and Auburn) have 5 or more Power 4 starts behind the presumed starter. At some SEC schools, the backup quarterback room doesn’t even feature 10 career completions—we’re looking at you, Arkansas (4 career completions), Missouri (3), and Tennessee (6). Yikes.
In other words, Florida is actually better equipped than the bulk of their SEC brethren to handle a quarterback injury, at least if you are looking purely at experience.
Of course, not all quarterback injuries feel the same.
Lagway, the anointed savior of Florida football from the moment he stuck with his commitment and Billy Napier and signed with the Gators in December 2023, is the essential piece of the puzzle for the Gators to become who many analysts and scouts that have watched this team practice believe they can be.
With Lagway, Florida feels like a program on the rise. A Playoff contender.
Without him?
Well, Gators fans are used to being stuck in the mud. What’s another lost year?
Neil Blackmon covers SEC football and basketball for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.
