Gators may be keeping 2025 scheme changes under wraps

During the first three years of the Billy Napier Era, the Florida Gators have almost exclusively run one or two tight end sets on offense. Despite a seemingly deep wide receiver room, the Gators have never put more than three of them on the field for any given play.

With Russ Callaway being named "Offensive Coordinator," there is some hope that Florida might open it up in 2025. But at his press conference on Tuesday, Callaway wouldn't tip his hand as to what Florida plans in 2025.

Florida Gators may or may not employ four wide receivers in 2025

Over the past three years, Napier has employed a three-wide receiver, one tight end set about 2/3rd of the time, and a two-wide receiver, two tight end set the other 1/3rd.

The contention among Gator fans isn't so much that two-tight end sets are bad, given that the NFL uses them and Ohio State also used them last season; it's that Florida doesn't have the quality tight ends to justify using them as much as they do.

And especially entering 2025, where Florida's wide receiver room is filled with speed for days, it feels like Florida would be better suited to spread things out to create speed mismatches.

But when asked about what the plan would be in 2025, Callaway gave a non-answer in terms of the direction the Gators would go this year:

"Yeah. I just think, look, at the end of the day it's about getting the best 11 on the field, period. And of the week-to-week basis, we may think 11 is better; we may think 12 is better; we may think 13 is better, 10, whatever. We may not even have a personnel grouping that we think may be better, but it's all about that's the whole — that's the genesis. That's where it starts.

And to say that we're going to do that this year for sure, don't know. We might. We might not. But I do think there's some things that we can do not just with the receiver room, but the running back room and the tight end room, to kind of get a lot more people involved. And that's kind of been the goal starting last spring throughout summer, and we're going to continue on that way."

Don't show cards until needed

Saying "We might. We might now" doesn't exactly instill confidence, given that Florida has had an entire offseason to think about this.

If we are being fair, we wouldn't want Florida to reveal its cards just yet. In an ideal world, the Gators would keep under wraps whatever scheme changes it had in mind under the LSU game to try and catch the Tigers off guard.

But if we are also being honest, we also went through last offseason wondering if there would be any changes to the offense, only for Miami to predict everything the Gators ran.

Callaway may try to defend Florida's tight ends and the progress they are making, but it is impossible to ignore the possibilities with Florida's wide receiver room.

All we really want is for fans in their basement to not be able to predict what is coming next with Florida's offense.