Coming into the 2025 season, one of the reasons for optimism surrounding the Florida Gators was the offensive line. The group was returning four of its five starters from 2024 and was a unit that seemed to take a step forward towards the end of last season.
There is a cache of reasons why Florida's offense has struggled in 2025, but the offensive line's regression is among them and a stat from Saturday's loss to Miami highlights just how poor things were in the trenches.
Florida's offensive line gets pushed around by Miami
Pro Football Focus is never the be all, end all of evaluations, but their grades for Florida's offensive line couldn't have been any lower from Saturday's loss.
PFF gave Florida's offensive line as a whole a 0.2 in Pass Blocking.
Mind you, that score is out of 100.
Dating back to 2014, the lowest grade Florida had ever gotten for Pass Blocking was 26.6 (2019 vs LSU).
Bryce Lovett and Damieon George Jr. both got a literal 0.0 in Pass Blocking, and outside of Jake Slaughter getting a 70.6, everyone else along the line received a grade under 35.
According to PFF, Miami got 23 QB pressures off 29 total drop-backs by DJ Lagway.
Too many resources for too little a result
Among the very notable glaring weak points of the Billy Napier Era has been recruiting along the offensive line. Florida has seldom landed blue-chip prospects along the offensive line and has seemed to believe that if it recruits a bunch of three-star guys ranked outside the top 500, they can just develop and build them up.
The issue is that Florida is one of the few schools in the country that uses two of its official assistant coach slots for offensive line coaches (Rob Sale and Jonathan Decoster), rather than hiring an actual offensive coordinator.
If Florida had a top ten unit, like some publications thought prior to the season, then one could justify it. But just like DJ Lagway, the offensive line has seemingly regressed.
The warning signs were there when Florida gave up 11 tackles for a loss against LIU, and it hasn't improved four games into the season. And if the line continues to give up 20 QB pressures a game, it won't matter if Kyle Trask or Tim Tebow magically gains eligibility; Florida's offense will continue to go nowhere.