Jon Sumrall wants his first spring as the Florida Gators football coach to be about competition in every position — and that includes quarterback.
Sumrall inherited Tramell Jones Jr., a redshirt freshman who played a handful of snaps last season backing up DJ Lagway and showed some promise. He added former Georgia Tech quarterback Aaron Philo, who backed up Haynes King last season at Georgia Tech and has also shown a lot of promise in the opportunities he got on the field.
Jon Sumrall details the addition of Georgia Tech transfer Aaron Philo and assesses Florida's quarterback competition.
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“The place he was at, they didn’t want him to leave.” Sumrall said of Philo. “Tramell, I’m excited about. I like our QB room.”
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Philo was likely to be the starting quarterback for the Yellow Jackets in 2026, but he left Atlanta to come to Gainesville and be reunited with offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner. The familiarity Philo has with the system that Faulkner is trying to install gives him a natural advantage during the spring, but Sumrall doesn't want fans to be so quick to dismiss Jones.
"[Faulkner] had extreme confidence in him,” Sumrall said to GatorCountry.com. “The place he was at didn’t want him to leave. There’s a lot of people there that felt like he was ready to be the starter there, and I trust our offensive coordinator to make the call. I watched him in high school as well. He carries himself the right way.”
Sumrall promises open QB competition for spring
The beauty of this kind of competition is that both players are going to enter spring hungry to be the man and with the luxury of having a clean slate. Faulkner probably hasn't seen much of Jones outside the film and whatever he's doing with his offseason workouts, so there's going to be some adjustment there.
And this is also going to make for some great spring coverage and debates. Because of the transfer portal and all the big NIL deals for quarterbacks, there just aren't a lot of spring quarterbacks competitions that happen at top programs. It's becoming more and more rare for a program that is trying to compete at a top level to have an open competition at the most important position on the field.
But that's what Sumrall wants to establish in his first few months — competition and opportunity. May the best man win and may the man that finishes second keep pushing for the top spot.