Jacoby Brissett. Jeff Driskel. Tyler Murphy. Skyler Mornhinweg. Will Grier. And now another quarterback is set to switch schools.
Per multiple reports, Treon Harris is set to transfer out of the Florida program. Harris split time in 2014 with Jeff Driskel before eventually taking over as the starter near the end of the year. He then lost the starting job again early in 2015 to Will Grier, but then won it back by default when Grier was suspended for PEDs.
However, Harris was largely ineffective last year after taking over for Grier, so much so that he was all but forced to switch to wide receiver. Jim McElwain went from having no decent quarterback options aside from Harris to several, with newcomers Luke Del Rio, Austin Appleby, Kyle Trask and Feleipe Franks arriving on the scene this spring. So it was clear Harris would never play QB again. But with a similar amount of depth at wide receiver coming in this year alone- Josh Hammond, Freddie Swain, Tyrie Cleveland, Rick Wells and Dre Massey (not to mention Antonio Callaway)- he was probably never going to play there either. The most logical thing for him to do was leave the program, so that’s what he did.
The timeline of Harris’s relationship with the Gators is admittedly a rocky one. Not even counting his less than helpful play on the field at times, Harris did some things to really turn fans off, like tweeting “the gators garbage” as a high school recruit, getting himself suspended for the Tennessee game for smoking marijuana- right after it became clear that the QB job belonged to Will Grier, which is selfish as could be- and posing for pictures with Jimbo Fisher laughing his head off mere seconds after FSU got through smashing the Gators’ national championship dreams last November. He was also accused of sexual assault right before the LSU game in 2014, though it’s worth noting that nothing has ever come of that. But he did beat Georgia twice, which goes a long way with me, and he bailed the Gators out from a potentially disastrous situation in 2014, taking what could have easily been Florida’s second consecutive bowl ineligible team and guiding them to a 7-5 finish with a bowl victory.
So while I cannot objectively say that losing Harris will hurt, and despite the headaches he caused for fans at times, I do wish him the best in whatever he does next, wherever that may be.
