Florida fans will love Jon Sumrall’s blunt take on bad personnel usage

The laundry list of problems from the Billy Napier Era is so long that it almost needs an AI summary to condense into a readable format. Among the chief problems Napier had was his insistence on two tight end formations when it was clear Florida didn’t have quality enough tight ends to justify their position on the field.

Whether or not Jon Sumrall is hyper-aware of the problems Napier had, or he is simply a breath of fresh air, is still to be determined, but this week he doubled down on a goal of his to make sure the best players on the roster find a way to get on the field.

Jon Sumrall wants the best players on the field for Florida

Appearing on the Gator Nation Football Podcast, Sumrall asked about his approach to deciding what personnel groupings he was going to use in 2026.

Sumrall highlighted he plans on taking a more hybrid approach that is adaptable and mentioned his philosophy when it came to getting the best players on the roster onto the field:

“I'll have everybody on our staff rank, regardless of position, write down the top 11 players. So offensively, I don't care if they put in seven receivers in the top 11. If they're the best, it's like, don't feel the offense or defense, tell me who the best 11 are. Now give me the next 6 or 7 in your eyes.

And I make every person do it individually. So there's no group thing because what happens is inevitably we get in a room and we all, we all like most of the guys in the room, they'll look to the coordinator for what he thinks.

I care a lot about what the coordinator thinks. They're the coordinator for a reason. But man, somebody may see something that we all don't see about a player that we need to get that guy on the field more.

And so to, to help you like see how I view it is like, man, if we got 4 receivers or let's say 6 receivers in the top 11 and no tight ends and we're playing a lot of 12 personnel, then we're freaking idiots.”

Best man up

We said time and time and time and time again here at Hail Florida Hail that it didn’t make sense that Florida had a cache of legitimately fast wide receivers, only to insist on constantly playing two tight end sets. The argument we made is that while two and even three tight end sets are not automatically bad, and the NFL does use those sets a ton, one also has to have the tight ends to justify their usage.

Florida’s tight ends, ever since Kyle Pitts left, have been average at best.

As Sumrall highlighted last week, there are drawbacks to using a four-wide receiver set, and a team can’t just ignore the tight end altogether. But when a team is based on speed, it makes no sense to then try to become a power-based team.

As with everything Sumrall has said this offseason, we’ll see if his actions once the season begins actually match his words. 

But the fact that we are even having this conversation is a massive 180 from the guy that Sumrall was asked to replace.

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