All offseason, it felt clear that Jon Sumrall and his staff had a preference for Aaron Philo to be the starting QB. There were fair, legitimate reasons to start Philo ahead of Tramell Jones, even though, from the outside, we felt Jones had the higher ceiling. The one caveat Sumrall kept repeating was that he wasn’t automatically going to have one QB start all 12 games just because they started in game one.
Multiple reports now indicate that Jones is set to be the starter this Saturday against Oklahoma. So credit to Sumrall that he has stuck to his word and appears to have made the switch at QB he claimed he would be willing to make if needed.
Jon Sumrall makes the switch at QB1 to Tramell Jones
There isn’t much to rehash from this past Saturday, as neither QB walked away as the automatic answer for Florida’s starting QB. But what was clear is that whatever advantage Philo had prior to the season due to his knowledge of the offense was gone. And it was clear that if Philo had won the job because his floor was higher than the floor for Jones, that too was gone.
The one thing we noted in the offseason is that when Sumrall would talk about the two QBs, he seemed to find a way to nitpick Jones far more than he would Philo. He kept crafting a narrative that Jones was more mistake-prone and that he wasn’t running as clean an operation.
And it’s possible that was true, but it was Philo who threw interceptions in the spring game and in Florida’s preseason scrimmage, not Jones. But four games into the actual season, those fears were mitigated as Philo was running a clean opperation and Florida started 4-0.
But against Missouri, the warts started to show. Those warts continued against South Carolina, where he started turning the ball over. Even though Jones would get the start against Texas and win, Sumrall went back to Philo against Georgia, claiming in part that Jones had been banged up during the week.
Once Philo threw his Charlie Brown-style interception, even Sumrall knew he had to pull the plug.
So in one breath, one has to wonder how far along Jones could have been if he had been tapped to start from the beginning. What’s done is done, and Sumrall has stayed true to his word, showing he is willing to make a change even if you were the handpicked player Buster Faulkner chose to run the operation.
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