![New Gator head football coach Jon Sumrall fires up the crowd during the first half an NCAA basketball game at Steven C. O'Connell Center Exactek arena in Gainesville, FL on Saturday, January 24, 2026. Students, who get in free, have a limited number of seats so many camp out overnight. [Alan Youngblood/Gainesville Sun]](https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_crop,x_0,y_140,w_2593,h_1458/c_fill,w_720,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto/images/ImagnImages/mmsport/213/01kgpysmp76nrpzyvbh1.jpg "New Gator head football coach Jon Sumrall fires up the crowd during the first half an NCAA basketball game at Steven C. O'Connell Center Exactek arena in Gainesville, FL on Saturday, January 24, 2026. Students, who get in free, have a limited number of seats so many camp out overnight. [Alan Youngblood/Gainesville Sun]")
The Billy Napier Era had a ton of problems that sank the Gators, but one of the hidden areas for most fans that was a precieved issued was in the offseason with the strength program. Napier was forced to go through three different strength coaches, none of whom seemed to be up for the task of getting Florida SEC-ready.
We won’t know until Florida takes the field in 2026 whether or not Jon Sumrall’s approach is any better, but on Wednesday, he highlighted the man tasked with making the Gators stronger this offseason.
Jon Sumrall talks about Rusty Whitt
Sumrall hired Rusty Whitt to be the Director of Football Performance for the Gators for 2026. Whitt has been by Sumrall’s side since 2022, and prior to being a college football strength coach, he had a career in the military and served as a Green Beret in the Army from 2003 through 2009.
Sumrall was asked how he came in contact with Whitt and why he has continued to bring Whitt with him through his own coaching journey:
“(Whitt) been on the job for about 18 months when I took the head job at Troy. And I fully intended on firing him. Like he was not being retained. And I did my homework, and I'm like maybe this could work. I did more homework. And me and him had a bunch of one-on-one meetings. And I'm like this guy's probably a part of the solution here, not the problem. And now we're like brothers.
He’s very, very close to me. I have a lot of confidence in him. We can usually, like this morning on our workout, I can usually look at him and say two words. He knows exactly what I'm thinking and vice versa. He can look at me and sometimes just say a couple words. And it's like that country song, you say it best when you say nothing at all. That's me and Whitt. We don't say anything. We just look at each other like, I got it. I can pick up what he's feeling. And we're very aligned.”
The past is in the past
Napier hired Mark Hocke to be Florida’s strength coach when Napier took the job in 2022. Hocke had been with Napier at Louisiana.
The problem was that Hocke ran a strength program that focused more on running than it did on actually lifting. Anthony Richardson said himself in 2022 that:
“He's focused on your body a little more. For the last staff, they were trying to get us to bulk up and be a lot stronger. But, Coach Hocke, he wants us to be like, a faster team, because you can't really teach speed, but you can get guy's body right so they can move a little faster."
When it was clear Florida's strength program was a problem, Hocke was demoted ahead of the 2024 campaign. Napier tried to hire Craig Fitzgerald, and it seemed like a solid hire, but Fitzgerald bolted after a month to go to Boston College. Napier then pivoted to Tyler Miles, and while the issues were not as glaring as they were with Hocke, Florida also couldn’t stay healthy to save its life. Some of those injuries were out of anyone’s control, but there was a lingering feeling that Florida could have been doing more to prevent some of the other non-contact injuries that popped up.
We won’t know whether or not Whitt is the right hire until kickoff, but for now, he seems to embrace the mindset of Sumrall, and that is probably a good thing in the weight room.