(Photo via D’Antre Robinson)
For D’Antre Robinson, all that is old is new again.
Growing up a Gator fan, Robinson (Orlando, FL/Jones HS) eventually put that aside as his own football career took off and his stock soared, eventually developing into a four-star prospect. In addition to his childhood dream school, Robinson also garnered offers from Alabama, Texas, Miami, LSU, Mississippi, USC, Auburn, Georgia, Tennessee, Penn State, and Michigan. Eventually, he decided he wanted to be a Texas Longhorn, and despite Billy Napier and his staff never backing off, he signed to play for Steve Sarkisian’s squad.
But sometimes in college football, even signing on the dotted line doesn’t make anything official. Shortly after sending in his letter of intent to Texas, Robinson had second thoughts and asked to be released from his LOI. That essentially made him a free agent, and Robinson chose to come home and play for the team he’s rooted for since he was a small child.
It’s a nice story on its own because of the whole “follow your heart and your dreams will come true” angle. But put that aside for a minute. D’Antre Robinson can play.
You can watch his high school highlights here.
An interior defensive lineman by trade, scouts warn that Robinson needs to be more consistent in what he does off the snap before he can expect to see the field, and that his highlight tape is just that– a collection of highlights that shows what he can do. But new defensive line coach Gerald Chatman– who was instrumental in landing him– has worlds of potential to work with here.
Standing just under 6’4 and 315 lbs., Robinson shows some nice bursts on tape and an ability to get to the ball carrier. Even when opposing offensive lines tried to double-team him, he shows an ability to simply bully his way past the double-team and blow up the play. He’s got a respectable array of pass-rush moves for an interior defensive lineman, although he seems to vacillate between that and simple brute force to get into the backfield– the latter of which will slow considerably at the next level for the simple reason that everyone he’s going up against is much bigger.
Robinson joins a tremendous defensive line class at Florida that also consists of five-star prospect LJ McCray and highly-touted Penn transfer Joey Slackman. Florida’s lack of a push from its defensive front last year led to a defense that surrendered 1210 yards in the span of just two games, and so a premium was placed on addressing that this cycle. Losing a trio of committed four-star defensive line prospects in Nasir Johnson, Amaris Williams, and Jamonta Waller made it seem like the Gators’ staff had failed in that aspect. But to their credit, Napier & Co. worked a little overtime after the buzzer and snuck one last piece into the mix.
Now we sit back, watch Napier continue to attack the portal, and hope to land a few more prospects in the eleventh hour of this cycle. There are still some prospects at large, namely Alabama signee Jameer Grimsley (who was recently released from his letter of intent), and so the work here isn’t quite done.
Let’s take this momentum and build off it, Billy.
