Viral videos highlight Florida Football's hope Tyler Miles vision will bring gains

One of the perceived problems Florida Football has faced over the past two seasons with Billy Napier has been with strength coach Mark Hocke. After following Napier from Louisiana, Hocke was the target of criticism as Florida continued to get pushed around on the field.

Napier made a change in the offseason to Craig Fitzgerald, but after he left, the Gators settled in on Tyler Miles. We won't actually know if this change in philosophy is going to pay off until August 31, but based on the content Florida has been putting out this year, they want you to believe they will be stronger in 2024 than in 2023.

Florida Football: Yeah Buddy!

Over the last week, the Gators have put out an array of content from their weight room. Freshman safety Josiah Davis was seen squatting 500 pounds. Freshman runningback Jadan Baugh squatted 550 pounds. Graham Mertz also had a video power cleaning, and there have been multiple other weight room videos floating around various social media platforms.

Now we are not going to pretend that Florida is somehow alone in college football with their usage of the weight room, but there has been a clear narrative from the content they have put out this offseason that the weight room is something they are wanting to highlight.

For example, the Gators had an episode last year of their YouTube show "This Is... The Swamp" called "Strength In The Details." The episode featured Hocke and the rest of Florida's strength staff talking in front of a camera and featured Florida players doing stuff on their practice field, but only two or three actual lifts in the weight room were showcased.

This year's episode "Raising The Bar" features Miles laying out what a session looks like and a much longer montage of Gators lifting heavy weights. In addition, we got a glimpse of Florida's leaderboard in the weight room, something we never saw under Hocke.

And looking back at these two episodes juxtaposes the change in philosophy from the Gators. Even Anthony Richardson highlighted that Hocke was far more focused on conditioning and running than lifting heavy weights.

Napier is hoping this shift pays dividends in 2024.