Florida Football: Who exactly is Gator QB Max Brown?

Such is life for Florida football that Graham Mertz is more than likely done for the season after suffering a collarbone injury against Missouri on Saturday night. In his place, Max Brown took the reigns and had the Gators in a position to win before 4th and 17 happened.

Since it looks like Brown will be the starting QB this upcoming Saturday against FSU, who exactly is Florida’s new person under center?

Florida Football: Max out

Brown came to Florida as part of the 2022 class. He was a three-star prospect out of Tulsa, OK and was the 35th highest rated QB in the country according the 247 Sports.

Originally committed to Central Michigan under former Florida head coach Jim McElwain, Brown flipped in January of 2022 to come to Florida shortly after Billy Napier was hired. Brown also had interest from Temple and also had an offer from Washington.

Playing in the class 3A division in Oklahoma, Brown racked up 61 touchdowns his senior season.

Brown obviously redshirted last season behind Anthony Richardson, but he was also behind Jalen Kitna and Jack Miller on the depth chart.

Kitna is gone because of reasons, but it was notable that Brown was able to beat out Miller for the backup job, considering Miller was a former four-star QB that came in from Ohio State.

As was on display last night, Brown was noted for his athletic ability coming out of high school. He was more of a rollout passer than a traditional pocket passer, but he still had back-to-back seasons of over a 70% completion rate while in high school.

Brown was also a member of Florida’s baseball team during the 2023 season, though he did not appear in any games.

Heading into FSU, we can probably expect to see more option based plays with Brown as opposed to Mertz.