Florida Football: Gators’ tight end position has major changes

Florida Gators’ tight end position has major changes in practice

Florida football has had some major changes come to fruition in the last week worth of practice, many of which coming at tight end.  The Gators have seen two long-term injuries at the position, another who has not shown up to practice (for unknown reasons), and 2 players change positions to tight end, all in the span of a week.  In this article, I will be covering each of these changes as well as how they happened/how they affect the team for this upcoming season…starting off with the injuries.

The first issue was that two of the Gators’ rostered tight ends had major injuries, which will end both of their spring practices according to 247Sports.  The first of which was Jonathan Odom, who came down with a torn labrum, and will be having surgery to repair it.  The timetable on these is dependent upon the grade of the tear and what surgery he will have, but it will take at least a month or more to heal.  On the other hand, Nick Elksnis broke his collarbone, and will also miss the remainder of spring practice.  Timelines on a broken collarbone is about 6-8 weeks to heal, and more time if he were to need surgery.

The next tight end question would be Gage Wilcox, who committed to Florida as the first commitment for former Florida football tight ends coach Tim Brewster.  Wilcox was not in attendance for the spring workouts so far, not being spotted by reporters (see tweet below).  This leaves the Gators with one rostered tight end on scholarship for the spot, that being Keon Zipperer.  Keon is a senior for Florida, who has never broken 200 receiving yards or had over 11 receptions in his first 3 seasons.

This left the Gators with a new idea, which was moving two non-tight ends to the position.  Senior year defensive end Dante Zanders was moved to tight end, as well as walk-on junior LB/edge Noah Keeter.  Zanders fits the prototypical build of a tight end, at 6’5″ 220 pounds, and has a history of playing tight end in his career.  Dante played tight end in high school, as well as 2 games his true freshman season and 13 games in his RS freshman season.  This bodes well for his chances, as he already has experience at the position.  Keeter on the other hand was a defensive lineman at UCLA in 2019 and has not played since, however, played defensive line/tight end at the high school level.  All of these changes make for interesting spring camps, as well as some interesting roster decisions Florida football needs to make in the coming months.