Florida football: 5 reasons Gators will be better than Florida State in 2018
By Phil Poling
5. Gators are loaded
Florida continues to churn out top-15 recruiting classes, even while not having a superior product on the field. Could the ranking system be tweaked a bit? Are the individual players ranked too high? Or is Florida still recovering from the great Urban Meyer years? I’d wager it’s a bit of all three, but let’s take a gander at their recruiting classes.
The 2016 recruiting class, per 247Sports, ranked 12th in the country. with three top-50 recruits: Antonneous Clayton (No. 27 nationally), Tyrie Cleveland (No. 34), and Chauncey Gardner-Johnson (No. 42). All three remain in Gainesville and as juniors, are expected to lead the team in 2018.
The following year’s recruiting class ranked 11th, but lacked a top-50 recruit. Their highest-rated commit, Tedarrell Slaton (No. 69), came in as an offensive lineman but has since made the move to the opposite side of the ball.
The Gators’ 2018 recruiting class ranked 14th — their lowest ranking since 2015, but they still managed to accrue four top-100 recruits, including dual-threat quarterback Emory Jones (No. 85).
The ‘Noles are also bringing in some exceptional talent year-after-year, but we’ve seen a number of their best signings leave Tallahassee and take their talents to Netflix. For the Gators to contend, though, they’ll need these recruits to do more than have stars beside their name on the internet.