As news broke yesterday that Jake Slaughter would return for his senior season with Florida Football, it was a continuation of a theme we have seen play out the past couple of weeks for Florida. Caleb Banks also opted to return when he had the chance to go to the NFL, while Damieon George was going to leave but reversed course less than 24 hours later and will be coming back in 2025.
Retaining key members of the squad is important heading into 2025. But it is just one piece of the puzzle, as the Gators still have plenty of holes that need to be addressed.
Florida Football: Teambuilder
The major subplot for Florida over the weekend was their lack of activity in the transfer portal. Since the portal opened last Monday, Florida has had just one player commit, a punter, while seemingly every big-name target from the first wave of entrants is going elsewhere.
The counterargument to Florida's lack of activity in the portal is that players like Banks, George, and Slaughter are as good as anyone Florida could find in the portal, so it is merely semantics that NIL money is going towards those guys versus a shiny new toy.
There is truth to that, and Florida is better off with those guys staying versus those guys leaving, but in case one needs a reminder, those guys were also on the team this year, and Florida still went 7-5.
Florida's roster was better than advertised in 2024, but it wasn't so elite that the Gators could just run it back with all the same players and expect the results to be much better.
They need reinforcements to go along with Slaughter and Banks.
As we wrote yesterday, Florida dragged their feet through the portal last offseason, and while they did land talent that contributed in 2024, they only had six "contributors" from last year's portal class, 11th in the SEC.
Roster building is a puzzle, and keeping your players is just one part of the puzzle. As it stands, Florida is neglecting the other part of the puzzle.
Keep in mind Florida claimed that part of the justification for keeping Billy Napier was to be aggressive in the transfer portal with the buyout money saved.
Yes, there will be more talent that hops in the portal in the coming weeks.
But if Florida was as aggressive as they claimed they were going to be, they would be retaining talent, AND landing players in the first wave, AND landing more talent during the later waves.
Right now, Florida has one of those three things going for them.
Time will tell if the other two come along or if history is just going to repeat itself.