Will Harris is putting an emphasis on tackling for the Florida Football secondary

As we chronicled last week, Florida Football was terrible at tackling in 2023. At times it looked like the Gators were simply observers on the field while opponents galloped freely on by en route to the endzone.

As spring practice is fully underway for the Gators, one particular drill the Gators are partaking in has fans excited that those days of being by standards are long gone.

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As a reminder, Florida had the worst tackling rate in the SEC last season, missing a tackle 24% of the time. Georgia had a missed tackle rate of just 15%.

Given the modern limitations of tackling in practice and the fact that teams often want to avoid injuries, it would be understandable if Florida's secondary ran through basic agility drills and maybe some ball location drills as spring practice gets underway.

But fans took notice of a video posted on the first day of practice by Cam Parker of All Gators that had new defensive backs coach Will Harris running through tackling drills and putting his own body in harms way.

To prove the drills wasn't a one off for opening day, Nick de la Torre of On3 posted a video yesterday of Harris running through the same drill.

The drill may be a bit flashy and we are not going to declare on day three of spring practice that Florida is going to go from the worst tackling team in the SEC to the best, but it shows that Harris is at least trying to instill a mindset in the Gator secondary to go out and hit someone. Part of the tackling woes from 2023 were as much due to mentality as it was to form and technique.

For Harris to jump in there and take the hits himself gives Florida's secondary zero excuse to lack in intensity.

As we mentioned last week, tackling will probably still be far from perfect in the first couple of games until Florida is able to get live game reps. But after last year of standing around and doing nothing, at least the Gators are trying something different this spring.