One of the under-the-radar events that happened in the offseason after Jon Sumrall was hired at Florida was the retention of Jayden Woods. The sophomore EDGE had entered the transfer portal after last season, but Sumrall and the rest of Florida’s staff were able to claw him back from the portal and keep him as a Gator for the 2026 season.
And while most of the offseason focus has been on the starting QB battle for Florida, a number of fans outside of Gainesville might soon be learning why keeping Woods was such a massive event for Florida as a whole in 2026.
Jayden Woods named to Preseason All-SEC Team
The Preseason All-SEC Team was announced following the completion of SEC Media Days. The Gators wound up with just three players on the list, with Jadan Baugh, Vernell Brown III, and Woods making the cut. For what it is worth, Florida was tied for 9th in terms of total players on the list, which is also where they were predicted to finish in the overall preseason poll.
Woods also went a bit viral on Friday when X account Dov Kleiman shared a clip that Florida strength coach Rusty Whitt had originally posted on his Instagram a couple of weeks ago. In the clip, Kleiman captions it with “Insane: 19-year-old DL Jayden Woods deadlifts 405 lbs with EASE in front of his teammates.”
Now, for the normal human, a 405-pound deadlift is still impressive, but it is not earth-shattering. For a high-level football player, a 405-pound deadlift is the bare minimum that should be expected.
Wait, what’s that?
He didn’t actually do a deadlift; the clip was miscaptioned, and rather, he did a 405-pound clean?
Oh, yeah. That is actually wild.
Carry on.
Insane: 19-year-old DL Jayden Woods deadlifts 405 lbs with EASE in front of his teammates.
— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) July 24, 2026
Woods is 6-foot-3, 245 pounds and recorded Florida’s team-high on the lift.
🤯🤯🤯 pic.twitter.com/KxXXkISXZx
Jayden Woods is a symbol of Florida as a whole
When Sumrall assembled this roster for the 2026 season, you can paint a picture of why guys like Myles Graham, Vernell Brown III, Dallas Wilson, and even Jadan Baugh stayed without much effort. All of those guys are either local guys, legacy guys, or, in the case of Baugh, a guy who had laid down roots in Gainesville and didn’t want to change that.
None of that applied to Woods. He is from Kansas, and it wouldn’t have been outside anything crazy in the modern era for him to leave after his freshman season. But Woods came back and joined the above group to form Florida’s version of a Fab Five of returners of guys that Gator fans wanted back the most for 2026.
If Woods can take a step forward in 2026, and while we are at it, if LJ McCray can show flashes of his five-star potential, the EDGE group from Florida has a chance to be one of the top units in the SEC even if no one is talking about them at the moment.
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