Finally, some good news for the Florida Gators on the recruiting trail– actually, a whole lot of it. (Photo via Micah Jones, twitter)
Billy Napier and the Florida Gators got off to a slow start with their 2025 recruiting class, but as June melts into July, there’s a little bit of momentum that’s starting to be built.
After stagnating at four commits through the middle of May, the Gators’ class has now doubled in size over nine days with a trio of pass-catchers plus punter commit Hayden Craig. From June 21 to June 29, Napier and his staff landed three prospective targets for DJ Lagway: tight end Micah Jones (Madison, MS), wide receiver Joshua Moore (Pembroke Pines, FL), and now Tae’shaun Gelsey (Jacksonville, FL), who’s a hybrid of those two positions. 247Sports lists Gelsey as a wide receiver, while On3 lists him as a tight end.
While none of the three were five-star recruits, each one of them garnered some serious attention on the recruiting trail. All three are ranked in the top 40 in the country at their respective positions and had a multitude of other non-bottom-feeder Power Four schools after them.
The Gators’ mid-summer salvo began on June 21, as Billy Napier and tight ends coach Russ Callaway rode west and beat out both Ole Miss and Mississippi State (as well as LSU) for their in-state tight end, Micah Jones. You can watch his high school highlight tape here.
Jones, the #27 tight end in the class according to On3, didn’t seem to have a difficult time choosing Florida. Forming strong bonds with Callaway and Napier made his decision an easy one, as Callaway established contact with him on the very first day he was allowed to and never relented.
Jones doesn’t have the hype of the top recruits in the 2025 cycle, but the upside is there. At 6’5, 245 and still with some room to grow, he’s got the physical build needed for SEC football, and while he’s not exactly a Kyle Pitts type of explosive athlete, he can make some plays with the ball in the air and is playing tight end to catch the football first and block second– which there’s also tape of him doing well.
Joshua Moore was the second to pull the trigger, committing to Florida over in-state rivals FSU and Miami five days later on June 26th. You can watch his high school highlight tape here.
This was the big one.
Moore fought through an injury to enjoy a monster 2023 season for West Broward High School, reeling in 50 catches for 835 yards and nine touchdowns. Perhaps that’s why On3 rated him as the ninth-best receiver in the entire class. And his stock promises to only keep rising: he stands 6’3, 205, still isn’t finished growing, and comes equipped with ball skills that just can’t be taught.
To boot, he’s formed a strong relationship with Lagway, which was part of why he committed to Florida. As he put it in an interview with On3: “They got a general at quarterback. Everybody else ain’t got a quarterback,”
Three days later, Napier & Co. completed the trifecta with Tae’shaun Gelsey, who picked Florida over an interesting array of competitors: Auburn, Tulane, Kentucky, and Central Florida. You can watch his high school highlights here.
Gelsey is the wild card of the batch.
247Sports lists him as a wide receiver, while On3 has him as a tight end. The Florida Gators agree with the latter categorization, and have delegated Callaway, not receivers coach Billy Gonzales to handle his recruitment even though he plays wide receiver in high school. The vision for him appears pretty simple: utilize his 6’4, 220 frame to be a mismatch nightmare.
He certainly is just that for Riverside High School. After posting a respectable 32 catches, 503 yards, and five touchdowns as a sophomore, he nearly doubled that production in 2023. He hauled in 48 receptions for 859 yards and nine touchdowns in his junior season. Along the way, he frequently showed off his natural athletic ability that, if he fills out his frame and adjusts to the SEC, could potentially continue at Florida.
That triad of pass-catchers didn’t do a whole lot to help the Gators’ recruiting class ranking. With the same number of total commits as FSU, Napier’s 2025 class (#65 in the 247Sports Composite rankings, #40 in the On3 Industry rankings) is light-years behind Mike Norvell’s 2025 class (#42 on 247 and #9 on On3) as we enter July. Even after cleaning up at a position of need– no, there was no can’t-miss five-star in there, but landing three commits who are ranked in the top 40 in the class at their position is always a good thing– Florida’s 2025 class has a lot of work to do at pretty much every other position.
But those rankings don’t tell the entire story.
Part of that wide gap between Florida and FSU this cycle stems from the fact that FSU beat Florida out for one five-star recruit that the Gators haven’t given up on yet (OT Solomon Thomas), and with only eight commits each, that one athlete makes for a larger discrepancy between the two classes than if each class had eighteen commits. But the primary takeaway here is that anybody who followed Florida Gators recruiting before this cycle knows all about how and why summer recruiting rankings don’t mean a whole lot.
The same way that things started snowballing against Napier’s program last year when the results started going against the Florida Gators on the field, that can go the other way, too– either conversely or inversely. If Miami stumbles to a 5-7 record– which, remember, looks much worse for the Canes in the ACC than it does for Florida in the SEC– and Napier manages to do any better, he can effectively go shopping in Mario Cristobal’s class– if he even keeps his job after a second 5-7 season, that is. On the other hand, if Florida can pull off an 8-4 season, suddenly Florida is more desirable a place to play than when recruits chose to pick other schools over them– and Napier can justify trying to recruit every player high on his board that turned him down a second time, only his time he’d be offering a shiny new Mercedez of a program as opposed to the slowed down Volkswagen that his 11-14 record is akin to.
In other words, results on the field mean more than any amount of offseason relationship building. The entire business is based on results, and everything else is an ancillary concern. Which is why Napier’s not going to keep his job if he keeps finishing seasons with losing records.
And yet, at the same time, Napier obviously couldn’t afford to wait until September and October to start the engines here. He had to do something, anything, on the trail to get the motors going. Napier is the first to talk about the importance of relationships, and whether it’s wise to admit it or not, a lot of kids do choose a school because of a personal relationship with someone at that school. This principle, of course, works with their prospective teammates as well as their coaches; talent attracts talent, friends want to play with friends, and most importantly, if the 2025 Florida Gators recruiting class stayed dormant with just four total commits for too much longer, other prospects could begin to get leery of that number, and eliminate Florida from their lists to bring themselves one step closer to their monumental decision with their senior seasons coming up.
But that’s not going to happen now, and now the task falls on Napier to use this momentum from the end of June to catapult this operation forward and really make some noise. The top two guys on my board for the Gators this cycle, David Sanders and DJ Pickett, seem to have cooled on the Gators, but most of the rest of them remain up for grabs, including recent USC decommit Hylton Stubbs and the aforementioned FSU OT commit Solomon Thomas.
Make your move, Billy.
