Florida Football Recruiting: Gators have momentum but still lag behind elites

Early National Signing Day is December 4, and as it stands right now, Florida Football does not have a top-tier group for the class of 2025. The Gators have been gaining momentum over the past couple of weeks and have climbed from the doldrums of being ranked 51st in the 247 Composite rankings to an at least salvageable 18th ranked class with less than a week to go before pen can start meeting paper.

And while Florida is still in contention for a couple of high-profile prospects, the reality is that unless something wildly unexpected happens, the Gators are going to wind up with a class that still lags behind that of their rivals.

Florida Football: It's always recruiting season

One of the back-and-forth arguments happening right now is Dan Mullen was accused of being a bad recruiter and yet his classes were still better than what Billy Napier currently has.

The counter-argument to that is that Mullen's classes never really panned out, even when they had solid rankings. For example, in 2019 the Gators finished 9th in the 247 Composite.

He had six top 150 players in the class:

• Khris Bogle
• Chris Steele
• Kaiir Elam
• Ty'Ron Hopper
• Mohamoud Diabate
• Keon Zipperer

Elam is the only one in that group who really panned out for Florida, as four of the other five wound up transferring away, and Zipperer has been done in by injuries.

The counter to that counter is that even if Mullen's classes weren't great, it is still really hard to win with consistency in the SEC if your recruiting class is 18th.

Florida is still in the running to try and flip some key prospects that could get them into the top 15, notably five-star offensive lineman Solomon Thomas, who is currently committed to FSU.

But if you start playing around with the 247 class calculator and start plugging in guys that Florida is even remotely linked to, the pathway to a top ten class is slim.

Napier has made some solid evaluations, and there is reason to believe some of the lower-rated four-star and three-star guys are better than what their star ratings suggest, but just note how the narrative has shifted over the course of a year.

Last year, when Florida had the third-ranked class heading into the season, the narrative was, "Man, Napier is an elite recruiter. Let him cook." Fast forward 12 months after that third-ranked class fell apart, and the narrative is "Man, stars don't matter; Napier is an elite evaluator."

The reality is that the blowouts to Miami and Texas A&M had consequences. All the recruits Florida brought to those games saw a lifeless performance from the Gators and said, "I'm going to look elsewhere."

The recent wins over LSU and Ole Miss have opened the door just enough to gain some of the recruits back, but make no mistake that heading into Early Signing Day, the Gators are still climbing a hill to finish out their class of 2025.