Thank you, Graham Mertz. (Photo via Florida Gators creative team)
There are no words left to describe what happened on Saturday night in Knoxville. What words I did have to express my disgust, I expressed on the postgame In All Kinds Of Weather Forecast episode. I try to take two different approaches to the podcast I co-host and the articles I write to give people who consume both different pieces of content, but after that performance I have nothing else left to say about the game itself.
The Florida Gators lost to Tennessee, 23-17, because of the worst coaching performance in at least the last 40 years. There. It’s that simple. There’s nothing more to add. The Billy Napier experience at Florida is down to a matter of days, not years, and he’s going to be lucky to not finish with the worst winning percentage of any full-time, non-interim coach in Florida Gators history.
So instead of beating that horse to death, I wanted to take a very different approach in what I write this week. I wanted to express my appreciation for Graham Mertz, who suffered a season-ending ACL tear on Rocky Top.
Some people won’t take this appreciation post seriously because I publicly clamored for DJ Lagway to be the starting QB for the rest of the way against Texas A&M. That’s fine. This isn’t for them. This is for every Gator fan out there who’s willing and able to separate the football battle between two quarterbacks and the overall leader that Graham Mertz was— and will continue to be for the rest of the year— at Florida.
Let’s go back two years ago, December of 2022. Mertz had just hit the transfer portal from Wisconsin, searching for a new place to play.
Wisconsin is not close to Florida in terms of prestige, environment, or ceiling, but it’s a big-time school by any objective metric. Don’t be fooled by how bland their offense typically is; to be able to play there is still a big deal. The nearby Green Bay Packers have one of the most diehard fanbases in all of sports, and there’s a lot of overlap there between the Packers and the Badgers. They don’t have a singalong after the third quarter like Florida does with Tom Petty’s classic “Won’t Back Down,” but they do have their own tradition of electrifying the crowd by blaring “Jump Around”. I even have a little cousin who went there just to experience that camaraderie. Oh yeah— and Wisconsin is in the same conference as Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State.
So it wasn’t that Graham Mertz never played in a big-time situation or wasn’t ready for big time football as he departed Madison. He’d played on big stages before. He simply wanted to play on even bigger stages.
But a lot of people didn’t think he was ready for those bigger stages. His game tape at Wisconsin certainly left a lot to be desired, and while some of that was the offensive system he was in, some of it was just plain bad decision making. “If he wasn’t good at Wisconsin, how are we supposed to believe he’d be good at Florida? Exactly, he won’t,” went the argument.
So when Graham Mertz posted a picture of the darkened field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in December of 2022, Gators fans howled their disapproval. Grayson McCall, Michael Pratt, and Sam Hartman were the names people wanted to see. And in the meanwhile, an ugly mess involving four-star QB commit Jaden Rashada was beginning to play itself out behind the scenes— which would further buoy fans’ rage about taking Mertz.
None of that mattered to Graham Mertz, or if it did, he never let it show. The former Badger quarterback came to Gainesville and starting working on his craft, quickly developing a relationship with wide receiver Ricky Pearsall and staying late after practice to either study film or work on timing routes. Fans’ disdain for the take— not necessarily directed at him, but at the fact that he was Billy Napier’s choice QB in the portal— wasn’t his concern.
Learning the offense was. His performance on the field was. Building relationships with his teammates was.
And so it didn’t take people in the building by surprise when Mertz went out and produced a big year. His teammates quickly came to respect him for his work ethic, heart, and brains.
This is the part of the post where readers might feel as though the “backhanded” part of a backhanded compliment is coming. You know, something to soften the overall complimentary tone of the post. Nope.
It’s true that Graham Mertz doesn’t have the ridiculous natural talent that the Florida quarterback before or after him have. But natural talent alone is not a guarantee of anything. You still have to work hard and want it to succeed. By the same token, not having talent isn’t a guarantee of failure; it just means you have work even harder and want it even more.
The Florida Gators career of Graham Mertz is going to be remembered as proof of exactly that. Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. Or more accurately, hard work and brainpower beats talent when talent doesn’t work quite as hard.
Graham Mertz will forever be remembered for his gritty QB sneak into the end zone against Tennessee in 2023, and then gathering his team on the sideline for a celebration that featured him tossing an imaginary object into the air, swinging a prop baton like a baseball bat and knocking it out of the park. That QB sneak didn’t showcase talent; it showcased guts and effort to complete the physically uncomfortable act of pushing through a mass of humanity to bring a football a yard forward.
Graham Mertz will forever be remembered for his touchdown pass to Ricky Pearsall to complete the comeback against a South Carolina team that had dominated the game for three and a half quarters, thus devastating what had been a pompous and partying fanbase. That touchdown pass didn’t showcase talent; it showcased resolve and a killer instinct to step up and make the play of the game mere minutes after he nearly threw an interception on a tipped ball and was given a reprieve.
Graham Mertz will forever be remembered for his uncharacteristic welcoming of physical violence on a 3rd and 9 run against Missouri, lowering his shoulder and trucking not one but two Tiger defenders on a desperate scramble attempt to pick up the first down. That run didn’t showcase talent; it showcased his love for the logo, and his teammates, to sacrifice his body, be willing to deal with whatever physical discomfort may come his way, and just do what had to be done for the team.
Graham Mertz will forever be remembered for the way he won his teammates’ trust, and support, with plays like those. If there was any doubt where he stood in that Gators locker room, it was erased when he was pushed to the ground while taking a knee to finish off Florida’s 29-16 win over Tennessee in 2023 and the benches cleared as Florida’s entire team swarmed Mertz’ assailants like killer bees. Offensive guard Micah Mazzccua even pulled a Tennessee defender aside and squared up like a boxer and got off a few punches (at least one of which landed) before that particular undercard was broken up.
And Graham Mertz will forever be remembered for the way he welcomed DJ Lagway with open arms, and then mentored him as his successor— a role he’s now going to leap into on a full-time basis. Lagway is a smart kid, fully capable of grasping things the way Mertz did, but that capability is going to really only come with time— and failure. The IQ and teaching skills of Graham Mertz are now going to be put to use to quicken the “growing pains” process that Lagway— and every freshman— inevitably goes through.
And, oh yeah– there were calls along the way for Mertz to be benched for DJ Lagway. Some of those came from myself. And while it was always strictly about Lagway’s higher ceiling from me, no fan complaints about the Gators’ QB situation ever fazed him. That’s not easy to do, either.
One of the many shames of Florida being such a badly-run program under Billy Napier is that it probably cost Graham Mertz a few rungs of real estate on the ladder of Gator legends. True, Mertz was not Tim Tebow, or Rex Grossman, or Danny Wuerffel, or even Kyle Trask. And no, never had a Kyle Pitts or Kadarius Toney to work with to help him get there, but between Ricky Pearsall, Tre Wilson, Arlis Boardingham and Elijhah Badger, there was real talent for him to work with.
Would have and could have and should have does no good, though. These “what-if’s” are great fodder for conversations on warm summer nights between occupants of the front porch rocking chairs and not much more. Mertz doesn’t see his career as what could have been; he sees it as what it was.
And the career of Graham Mertz was a hell of a story that combines the use of grit, heart, intelligence and reliability to drastically overdeliver compared to the level his natural talent said he should.
This is a man who, on the Gator Walk the day of the Arkansas game last year, stepped out of his own private world to walk over and personally thank a military veteran for his service.
This is a man who blocked out the noise to deliver time and again for his team, earning so much respect from his teammates that they were literally willing to fight for him.
This is a man who, not once but twice, ended his season with the Florida Gators literally giving everything he possibly had to give.
And for all of that, Graham Mertz is a Florida Gators legend— because he embodies all that college sports is supposed to be. In a new world where NIL and greed dominate the sport, Mertz embodies everything that made me fall in love with college football in the first place. Hopefully, he goes down in history as the guy who reminded future generations of athlete that it truly is possible to be that “love the logo” guy who puts his team first and himself second.
At least for me, he will.
Thank you, Graham.
