OK, Billy, OK. I see you. (Photo credit: John Raoux, AP)
It’s a very small sample size, but at long last, Billy Napier is beginning to win on the field and the recruiting trail at the same time.
And with his recent batch of commitments, the fortunes of the Gators’ 2025 recruiting class appear to have flipped overnight.
The first of these commits to pop was four-star linebacker Ty Jackson, who flipped over from USC. As it turned out, that was just the start of a wave of commitments. And now, there’s recruiting momentum unlike anything the Florida Gators have seen in the middle of a season in quite some time.
Mere minutes later, Florida flipped a pair of consensus three-stars from fellow Power Five schools: offensive tackle Jahari Medlock from Cincinnati and wide receiver Muizz Tounkara from Arizona. For Medlock, an offer from Georgia stands out, and he’s got offers from a few other lower Power Five schools such as Maryland, Kansas State, and Georgia Tech, but it’s safe to say he was pretty lightly recruited. Tounkara was a bit more in demand from the Power Five, with offers from Wisconsin, Arkansas, Mississippi, Utah, Kansas, Penn State, and Vanderbilt, but he, too, isn’t at the top of the recruiting rankings’ boards.
But before you get discouraged by the three-star ratings, consider: Florida currently has a bevy of three-stars playing at a high level right now. Among them: Bryce Thornton, Aaron Gates, Jadan Baugh, Trikweve Bridges, Chimere Dike, and Brandon Crenshaw-Dickson. With a track record like that, there’s something to be said about Billy Napier as an evaluator of talent.
And he may have found two more diamonds in the rough.
Tounkara, for starters, is a problem. He’s fast with a great catch radius, and can take the top off a defense. He’ll need to add a few pounds of muscle mass to his frame and work on his route-running a little bit (as most high school receivers do) but already standing 6’4 with a big-time vertical and shifty feet, he’s one of those three-stars that you tend to look to to outperform his rating.
Medlock is more of an unknown. Linemen by trade are typically harder to evaluate than most other positions, but watching his highlight tape you can see promise. He’s got some force that comes with his hands as he jumps out of his stance. He’ll need some technical work at the next level, but the potential is there.
But Florida still wasn’t even done with its 24-hour window of ferris wheel activity. This morning, Florida might’ve given FSU an appetizer defeat by stealing consensus four-star running back Byron Lewis away from the Seminoles, four days before the teams square off in Tallahassee. Lewis, from American Heritage in Fort Lauderdale, also had offers from Alabama, Georgia, Wisconsin, Miami, Ohio State, Michigan, Oklahoma, USC, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Penn State, Indiana, Colorado, Kentucky, and a whole lot more.
So, yeah. That’s a big one. You can watch his high school highlight tape here.
Louis combines great vision with a willingness to lower his shoulder and ram his way through the line for the tough yards. He’s not the fastest running back– more of a bulldozer at 5’11, 200 pounds– but he’s fast enough to see the hole and get there, providing the sort of one-cut-and-gone upside at the next level that any coach would love. He’s also learned to play a little receiver out of the backfield, too, expanding his usefulness on a larger variety of plays as a pass-catcher and a blocker in pass protection.
Louis is the second flip Billy Napier has engineered away from FSU in the past week. The first of these was QB Tramell Jones, a fringe three/four star who doesn’t figure to factor into any sort of QB competition as long as DJ Lagway is around, but provides some nice depth, and could, if he hangs around for a few years, one day be a starter when Lagway departs.
As a result of all this, Florida’s recruiting class has skyrocketed from outside the top 50 in the 247Sports Composite ratings all the way to #17. Florida also shot up the On3 Industry ranking system from #33 to #17 in the same time frame.
Clearly, there’s still a lot of work to be done on the recruiting trail– as is the case on the field, too. 7-5 (assuming Florida handles FSU) is not the standard, nor is the #17 recruiting class. But there’s no denying the Gators have momentum right now. And if they can keep it going, and ride it a little longer, we just might be seeing the dawn of a new era at Florida that we all hoped Billy Napier could bring in.
