Florida Football had solutions on the defensive line for 2024, but they transferred
Four games into the 2024 season, and it isn't a secret that the defensive line for Florida Football is a massive weak point for the Gators. Even after three sacks against Mississippi State, Florida has just five sacks on the year from their defensive line and still ranks 92nd in sack percentage in games against FBS competition.
And as Gator fans long for solutions, it turns out the answers are players who were at one point on Florida's roster.
Roster Turnover
One of the themes that has developed this year is the success of former Gator players who transferred out of the program the past couple of years. In fact, one could build a fairly competent starting lineup of just players who transferred and are still playing college football.
This rings the most true along the defensive line. The headliner for Gator fans is going to be Princely Umanmielen, now at Ole Miss. A segment of Florida fans tried to write off his departure as no big deal, noting a handful of plays where it didn't look like he was high motor, but we were never sold on this narrative and made the point that Umanmielen was one of the only players along the defensive line who ever got into the backfield.
Four games in at Ole Miss, Umanmielen has two sacks, five hits on the QB, and nine hurries.
Florida as a team has six hits on the QB.
As mentioned above, the defensive line for Florida has five combined sacks on the season, with Tyreak Sapp leading the way with two sacks.
Depending on the source you want to go off of, Antwaun Powell-Ryland has 4 sacks according to PFF, 5.5 sacks according to ESPN, and 6 sacks according to a graphic put out by Virginia Tech.
Either way, Powell-Ryland is leading the country in sacks in addition to having ten hurries on the season. No one on Florida's roster has more than five hurries.
And where exactly did Powell-Ryland play before Virginia Tech?
Oh, right.
The interior of the defensive line has been a bit better but still has holes of their own. Chris McClellan of Missouri currently has 12 "stops" on the season, which is a tackle that counts as a "failure" for the offense as it relates to a team's success rate.
His 12 "stops" are the second most in the country among defensive tackles.
I think you already know where this is going...
Just Get His Guys
One narrative that took hold when Billy Napier came to town was to wait until he got his guys into the program. Admittedly, we here at Hail Florida Hail bought into that narrative at times, in part because guys like McClellan had highlighted how quickly things deteriorated behind the scenes during the 2021 campaign.
But in 2024, we are at the point where Florida's roster is almost exclusively Napier's hand-picked guys, both players and coaches.
He can't use the excuse of waiting until better talent comes to shore up the defensive line when the talent he did have has left and is thriving elsewhere.