Dan Mullen and the Florida Gator football team hit the field for practice today as usual. One thing that made today’s practice different from a lot of the Gators’ other practices, though, was that today’s practice was (virtually) open to the public. The Gators’ digital media team streamed most of the teams’s reps live on Instagram, meaning anybody who wanted to could observe and take videos.
Today was also the Gators’ first practice in full pads, which of course meant some rust, but it also meant another step closer toward ironing out some of the kinks.
Here are all the videos I was able to capture from the team’s open practice today.
To start with, the Gators’ digital media team walked around from position group to position group, sporadically taking videos of some of their drills. The first reps I managed to record were from walkthroughs of some run-pass option drills with quarterbacks and running backs. And granted, there’s no defense crashing in on the offensive players, but it looks smooth enough for day one of full pads.
Next up: offensive lineman drills with coach John Hevesy, which included a steamrolling pancake block from Will Harrod.
Up next: some pass routes on air.
After that were 1-on-1 drills between wide receivers and defensive backs, with rotating quarterbacks throwing passes to the receivers.
Among the takeaways there: yes, everybody looks rusty, but for February, Emory Jones looks pretty solid. He seems to be learning when to put touch on the ball on when to fire it, and he makes a couple of pretty impressive throws here in the 1-on-1 drills.
Last but not least were the seven on seven drills.
Of course, it’s always fun to save the best for last, so I did. Here was my favorite play of the day: a perfectly executed wheel route from Anthony Richardson to incoming Clemson transfer running back Demarkcus Bowman.
Florida will hold another virtual live practice on Wednesday afternoon, which will stream on their Instagram accounts (@GatorsFB and @coachdanmullen).
