Florida football: The 2023 recruiting class is better than it’s given credit for

Florida football didn’t lane any elite recruits during the Early Signing Period. Qua Russaw, James Smith, and Desmond Ricks all went to Alabama. Jordan Hall pulled a Georgia hat out of a Florida bag, and Isaiah Nixon flipped to UCF.

But the class that Billy Napier and his staff put together is much better than it’s given credit for. With some time still left in the 2023 cycle, Florida’s class sits at 12th in the country and 5th in the SEC.

Part of what makes this class so good is how deep it is. Of the 20 players that signed yesterday, 18 are 4-stars. (We’ll count Rashada as a 5-star for our purposes, so 17 4-stars.) In years past under Dan Mullen’s staff, there was a much larger amount of 3-star players in the class.

Napier’s ability to land a plethora of 4-star players made the 2023 class the highest-rated class average at Florida since 2010 when Urban Meyer was still the head coach. Napier’s class average is 92.34, Urban’s was up at 93.99.

The Gators also rank at 5th in the country in blue-chip ratio at 90%. Blue-chip recruits are players that are 4/5 stars, which is 18 of the 20 players the Gators have signed.

Context is important when evaluating recruiting classes. It’s easy to look at the 5-stars that UF missed on this week and say that we still can’t recruit and won’t ever catch up to the big dogs on the trail.

But looking back at the classes that UF has hauled in over the past few years makes you feel better about what Napier was able to accomplish.

While some of Mullen’s classes ranked higher in their respective classes, the class average isn’t on par with what we got in 2023. Stacking these classes up against each other shows that Napier just brought in one of the best classes Gainesville has seen in years.

Florida recruiting is in good hands, and it will only get better from here.

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