Gators leapfrog rivals in rankings after Heze Kent joins the class

It wasn't that long ago that the Florida Gators were near the bottom of recruiting rankings and were left looking up at everyone else. As recent as mid-May, Florida had just one commitment in its class of 2026.

Since then, the narrative surrounding Florida has been much better, and with the most recent Florida commits, the Gators have surged past one of their chief rivals and have the others well within reach.

Heze Kent and KJ Ford commit to the Gators

With the commitments of Heze Kent and KJ Ford, Florida is now up to 18 commits for its class of 2026. At first glance, still being in 14th may not create shockwaves, but it is worth noting that Florida has four fewer commits than FSU and has still leapfrogged the Seminoles in the rankings.

This is because 13 of the 18 commits for Florida are considered blue-chips (five or four stars) while FSU has mostly fringe four-stars and a bunch of three-stars.

Florida is also "behind" Tennessee, Clemson, Miami, Texas, and Michigan, but has a higher per-player average than all of those schools. As a whole, the Gators are 9th in this category because they don't have a ton of fluff in the class to help boost the overall ranking.

Napier's first two classes took this approach too. The class of 2024 was 13th overall but 9th in per-player ranking, which included DJ Lagway and LJ McCray. The irony is that last year's class, which finished 7th overall, wound up taking on a ton of fluff and was just 11th in per-player ranking.

This class still isn't elite as it still lacks a couple of premier five-star recruits to headline it, but if the Gators can stick the landing on guys like WR Somourian Wingo, TE Carson Sneed, DL Valdin Sone, or LB DQ Forkpa, this class is still going to have a solid core to it that Napier and crew should be able to develop over the years.