Florida Football: Mannie Nunnery sends parting shot on his way to the transfer portal

With the spring transfer portal open for business, it is anyone's guess who for Florida Football is going to leave and who is going to stay. Right now, the Gators only have one player who has opted to leave during this period.

But that player made sure his voice would be heard on the way out and reopened one of the larger wounds from 2023 in the process.

Florida Football: 4th and 17

Mannie Nunnery is heading back to the transfer portal. The linebacker had entered the portal during the winter period but withdrew his name and took part in spring practice with the Gators. Nunnery had an interception during the spring game, but with the emergence of Pup Howard, the odds of Nunnery being anything more than a rotation guy in 2024 were low.

On his way out the door, Nunnery took to Instagram to express his thoughts and did not mince words about the Gators.

Warning, language not safe for work or small children.

If you are confused as to what Nunnery is referencing in this post, he is talking about the infamous 4th and 17 play against Missouri. Florida would have won the game had they gotten a stop, but instead star wide receiver Luther Burden was left wide open 20 yards down the field and the Tigers would go on to win.

One of the culprits from the play was Nunnery, who was caught in no man's land guarding grass as Burden casually ran right by him for the catch.

But to Nunnery's point, and something we have said on this site all offseason, even though Nunnery didn't do his job on the play and stopped about ten yards short of where he was supposed to drop to, it also wasn't the smartest of play calls from Austin Armstrong coming out of a timeout to rely upon the backup linebacker to drop 20 yards into pass coverage against the one singular receiving threat Missouri had. It also didn't help that Jordan Castell was playing 30 yards off the line to provide zero safety help on the play, which may or may not have been by design from Armstrong as well.

It is a two-sided coin where both sides have blame to accept, and rather than leave on a positive note after having a solid spring game, Nunnery is now going to have to convince a new DC to take a chance on him after he just trashed his old DC.

Nunnery's post also leaves one lingering question which is ultimately semantics at this point: If Armstrong was the problem and Nunnery felt like his was a scapegoat in Gainesville, why didn't he leave when he first entered the portal? What changed to pull out of the portal, go through all of spring practice with Armstrong still in charge, then opt to re-enter the portal and throw Armstrong under the bus?