Princely Umanmielen has gone from being a generally well-liked player to a pariah pretty quickly. (Photo credit: James Gilbert, Getty Images)
Departed ex-players saying less-than-flattering things about the program they previously played for is as predictable a development in college football as going for two in overtime. Players leave programs for a reason, and more often than not that reason stems from some sort of discomfort or discontent with the program. So it’s not surprising to see 18-22 year olds air their dirty laundry out in public.
For Florida fans, the most notable example of this was former Florida-turned-Georgia running back Trevor Etienne, who declared on a Georgia talk show: “I can stay RB2 on a losing team or go somewhere and possibly be RB1 and win a natty.” It may sting to hear, but that’s definitely a reasonable mindset for Etienne to have.
But for Princely Umanmielen, the public reasoning for his departure was more eye-raising. “Attacking the run game,” was Umanmielen’s response to being asked what he wanted to improve on in 2024. And then came the bitterness: “When I dropped back into coverage at Florida, they would just tell me go here, and the coaches here (at Ole Miss) go into detail about what routes are being run. At Florida it was almost like they were just telling me to go use my talent. I actually feel like I’m being developed here.”
That, to be clear, would be a perfectly valid reason to transfer. The problem is that it sounds like an outright lie calculated to build in an excuse for some of the less-than-awesome stuff Umanmielen put on tape last year.
For starters, if Umanmielen was actually providing legitimate feedback about the Florida staff, he sure wasn’t talking about his position coach.
Sean Spencer didn’t produce the results for Florida’s defensive line that we’d hoped, but there’s no way you’re going to be able to sell a narrative that paints Spencer– one of the most energetic and thorough explainers of assignments Florida has had in awhile– as that brand of lazy. Spencer didn’t guide the Penn State defensive line to lead the entire country in sacks in both 2015 and then again in 2018, nor did he develop NFL playmakers like Yetur Gross-Matos, by being nonchalant and nondescriptive.
And even though he took the fall for the Gators’ awful defense in 2023, I find it hard to believe that he just plain forgot how to coach since then. New Texas A&M coach Mike Elko agrees with that, as evidenced by that he immediately went after Spencer and named him the Aggies’ new defensive line coach.
Sure enough, former Florida All-American Shannon Snell– who remains very close to the program, smelled the BS too. And he called it out.
So either Umanmielen was referring to someone he didn’t answer to directly, like a grad assistant or another position coach who thought he saw something– which would be the textbook definition of intellectual dishonesty, given that the criticism is the opposite of accurate for the guy who actually did answer to– or the former Florida defensive end just told a shameless falsehood, either to excuse away all the times he failed to set the edge in the last four years at Florida or just to be spiteful.
This all happened two days ago. The reason I am only publishing this now is because I had to wait for feedback from someone who is very well connected to the program, and would be able to speak on Umanmielen’s claims first hand. I wanted this person’s input to publish an article, rather than copying and pasting a tweet from Shannon Snell (who himself is pretty trustworthy).
The response I got was a laugh. “Princely did a lot of good things at Florida,” the person told me. “But as far as that comment goes, not only is it inaccurate, it’s very provably so. Even if the coaches didn’t directly break down, ‘OK, here’s what you’re looking for in terms of routes’ on every single play or practice rep, players and coaches probably spend more time in the film room talking about exactly that than they do with their own families. So it’s not only a false claim, it’s a pretty foolish one, too.”
Personally, I don’t have an issue with former players providing constructive feedback or speaking facts in public about their former team. In the case of Trevor Etienne, I have zero issue with his comments whatsoever. We all know how many carries he got last year compared to Montrell Johnson, the same way we all know that Florida was 5-7 last year and 6-7 the two years before that, while Georgia won two national championships and narrowly missed on a third in that same three-year span. We don’t have to like those facts, but we have to accept them because they are indisputable. I don’t like the fact that Etienne transferred to our biggest rival, but it makes perfect sense and I have zero qualms with his reasoning.
Princely Umanmielen is different. Very, very different.
It’s bad enough that he never was very good at setting the edge, but he’s playing a dangerous game here blaming his former coaches when he seemed to pick and choose which plays to give effort on. And unfortunately often, he chose not to. Here he is taking a nap right on the field in a 10-0 game just before halftime against Oregon State in the 2022 Las Vegas Bowl. Here he is just being plain lazy against Utah in 2023, contributing to a long touchdown run in a 24-11 loss. Here he is, despite “not being developed” at Florida, somehow managing to be in great position to stop a running play against Vanderbilt in 2022, and then just whiffing on his atttempt to tackle Ray Davis, then a 5’9, 209 pound running back, turning what should have been a loss into a 12-yard gain in what would become a 31-24 loss.
(The latter example is not to be confused with the game in which the same Ray Davis, having transferred to Kentucky, basically spent three hours doing the same thing to all eleven Florida players.)
Even more glaring than his laziness on the field, though, was the fact that Princely Umanmielen directly contradicted himself with even the least problematic part of his answer– the fact that he wanted to work on being a better run defender. Which is weird. Because two years ago, in April 2022, Umanmielen was asked about the biggest change in the Gators’ defense between 2021 and 2022- and he responded by saying the new defensive regime was much more focused on stopping the run. If that isn’t the perfect subtext to his trashing of Florida here, I don’t know what would be.
So frankly: that’s about the quickest way to burn any respect or loyalty from your former team’s fanbase without firing a cleat down the field.
When he announced his intention to transfer, I had no ill will toward Princely Umanmielen. I was more than happy to root for him in eleven of twelve games this upcoming season. I thought the good he brought outweighed the bad at Florida, and was willing to write off his instances of laziness as just a necessary evil of a disruptive edge player.
But this is the second time he’s gone out of his way to trash the Florida program when he wasn’t even prompted to– the first of which was a pretty universally-accepted criticism of Florida’s strength and conditioning program the last couple of years– and that means it’s a pattern of him openly disapproving of how the operation was run at Florida. And I’m sure he’s as aware as anybody that this pattern of statements is going to be repeated to prospective athletes on the recruiting trail.
It’s not even like Lane Kiffin and Ole Miss have a real need to put Florida down, anyway. The fact that Ole Miss went 11-2 last year as part of Kiffin’s 34-15 record there while Florida will need to scratch and claw its way to 7-5 in 2024 for Napier just to be .500 in three years at Florida should be a more-than-sufficient recruiting pitch in any Florida-Ole Miss battle. And if Umanmielen was setting out to convince the world that Kiffin is a better head coach than Napier just for the sport of it, he’s wasting his time since roughly half of Florida’s fan base already thinks that he is anyway, plus if things don’t turn around in a hurry for Napier he’ll be terminated and that point would be made pretty indisputably for him.
All of that put together is why Princely Umanmielen as quickly put hmself in the “enemy” category of former player. You lost a fan this week, Princely, and I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one. I’m also starting to grow suspicious that maybe Florida’s staff wanted you gone for stuff like this, and pushed you to the transfer portal. Napier is already in enough trouble as it is with an 11-14 record in his first two years; the last thing he needs to have in this program is what he sees as a headache. I won’t speculate about what happened behind closed doors, but between the propensity for taking plays off and stuff like the “lil ahh stadium” comment, I could totally believe that Napier grew tired of the antics and wanted a fresh start at the edge position.
And while Princely’s response to this would probably be something along the lines of how my “lil ahh opinion” doesn’t matter, I’d warn him that it’s exactly that attitude that has marked the downfall of players far more talented than him in the NFL.
