(Photo via Vernell Brown III)
For Billy Napier and the Florida Gators football program, the 2025 recruiting class was pretty slow out of the gate, triggering some alarm bells. In mid-June, the Gators’ class stood at just four commitments, with only two of those being of blue-chip caliber (four-star or five star). As a result, Florida was barely even in the top 100 of the 247Sports Composite rankings 30 days ago.
But then, Napier & Co. got the ball rolling: a quartet of commitments to end June created some momentum. The Gators then built off that momentum by completing the flip of four-star linebacker Myles Johnson from Alabama on July 10. And now, the Gators have made national recruiting news by landing five-star wide receiver Vernell Brown III– an elite prospect that every school in the country would have loved to have landed.
Vernell Brown announced his decision to play for Florida today, giving the Gators a seismic head to head recruiting win over both in-state rivals Miami and FSU as well as perennial power Ohio State. In doing so, he instantly becomes the centerpiece of the Gators’ 2025 class.
Brown, who both the On3 Industry rankings and the 247Sports Composite rankings agree is one of the top 40 prospects in the entire 2025 class, is the son of former Florida cornerback– and more recently, senior director of player development– Vernell Brown II. The fact that he’s a legacy is fun, and makes for a nice story, but listening to Brown talk, it didn’t seem to help that much in terms of Florida landing him. The younger Brown– who boasts a 4.91 GPA– has repeatedly stated he wants to attend a school that will develop him as an individual off the field as well as an athlete on the field. And, well, Florida is pretty universally regarded as a school that fits that criteria.
Good thing for the Gators that Brown is such a versatile and ambitious young man, because they just got one hell of a talent.
You can watch his high school highlight tape here.
You might guess he runs track from watching that highlight reel, and you’d be correct. That footwork and explosiveness integrate seamlessly between track and football, and it makes for a nightmare for opponents. He’s not the biggest pass-catcher you’ll find, standing 5’11 and 170, but if he bulks up a little over the next 13 months, he’s a plug-and-play piece at slot receiver for the next three years. A lot of his movements are reminiscent of we saw from his future fellow slot receiver Tre Wilson in high school, but with possibly even more incendiary make-you-miss moves.
There’s a correct way to use a guy like Vernell Brown, and it’s not by throwing fade routes or asking him to make contested catches. If he develops that skill set, great, but as of now, he’s the guy you just want to funnel the ball to in open space and get some blocks for, which can turn a three-yard gain into a thirty-yard gain in the blink of an eye. He’s so difficult to run routes with as a defender because of his explosiveness coming out of the break, and then he’s equally difficult to tackle when he has the ball for the same reason.
Florida’s class is still nowhere close to where it needs to be– a pretty obvious sentiment when you simply look at the number of commits– but now there’s clearly some momentum being developed. Even with the addition of Brown, Florida still ranks outside the top 50 in the 247Sports Composite recruiting rankings, but they’re also some 40 spots higher now than they were a month ago. And because talent attracts talent, all Florida needed was a little momentum to get the ball rolling to pave the way for a future surge.
The question now reverts back to the same question Florida fans have been asking for three years: can the Gators win games in the fall? Because there’s no better way to attract recruits than that.
