Florida Football: Jordan Gile is a sneaky good addition at QB for Gators

It’s easy to be jaded in the world of recruiting. We get excited for four-and five-star guys and dream of their potential with Florida football. We praise Billy Napier for limiting the number of three-star guys on his big board and thumb our noses and yawn at lower rated recruits.

So, when Jordan Gile announced he would be a Florida Gator in 2023 as a preferred walk-on, most of us went “Ok, but what about the Jaden Rashada fallout.”

But watching the film on Gile reveals a potential hidden gem joining the Florida QB room next season.

Florida Football: Diamond in the rough

Let’s get the obvious out of the way; Jordan Gile will not be starting for Florida when the Gators take on Utah in the season opener.

Gile is a two-star prospect out of Tennessee that seemed to be largely ignored on the recruiting trail. Kansas and Arizona State were the only other Power-5 schools that expressed interest in Gile.

The biggest knock against Gile is his size. At 6’0″, 190 pounds he literally matches the same dimensions as I do. He’s by no means small for a normal human, but 82% of the QBs rated in the top 100 by 247 Sports are at least 6-1 or above, and the ones that are 6-0 or under are top-level athletes.

It’s not to say Gile can’t run, he had over 300 rushing yards last year, but it’s not the strength of his game.

But you know who else was 6’0″ and turned out to be a really good QB?

Drew Brees, and there are a lot of similarities between Gile’s film and Brees.

On his senior year highlight film, Gile is seen repeatedly chucking it deep and on target. He probably has 20+ throws on his film that were completions that went 30+ yards in the air. What’s more impressive is that despite the frequent deep shots, he still had a 74% completion rate.

According to MaxPreps, only one QB in the country that ranked in the top 200 in total passing yards had a completion rate higher than 74%.

Gile is left-handed, but also has on the film the ability to roll left and roll right and still deliver accurate throws into tight windows.

He does tend to have to wind up his throw and leans back instead of driving through, not too dissimilar to Brees. And there are critiques to be made that he played in Class II-AA in Tennessee, which is a relatively low level on totem pole of Tennessee high school football.

But for a preferred walk on for Florida football, there is a lot to like about Gile even if he doesn’t have a clear path to ever get on the field.

His full senior year film can be seen here.