The transfer portal will open for business this Friday, and it is anticipated that Florida will have 20+ players depart the roster and find a new home for the 2026 season. Some of these losses are just normal attrition that Gator fans won’t even notice, while some of these will legit create roster holes for Florida.
Our Fansided sister site, Saturday Blitz, has ranked the top 10 players in the transfer portal for each position group, and the Gators have multiple players on the list.
How much do we here at Hail Florida Hail agree with these rankings?
Let’s dive in.
DJ Lagway - No. 4 ranked QB
There were still flashes of Lagway in 2025 that made us think that he would eventually snap out of the funk that he was in all season, but that 180-degree turnaround just never came.
With that said, if Lagway can get his shoulder healthy and get a QB coach to actually work on his footwork, Lagway still has a sky-high ceiling, and his best days are not automatically behind him. Lagway will need a massive jump as well in his ability to read the field, but some of that was also hampered by Billy Napier’s Ask Madden offense.
Jayden Woods - No. 2 ranked EDGE
One could craft a narrative that Florida and Lagway just needed to move on from each other, and that wouldn’t be unfair. There were times Lagway looked broken in 2025, and a fresh start might do him some good.
One can not craft that narrative with Jayden Woods after a very productive true freshman campaign.
Woods is ranked as the No. 2 EDGE in large part because if he takes any kind of leap as a sophomore, he will become one of the top EDGEs in the country. His ranking also highlights just how hard it is to find premier EDGE players in the portal.
Of players who took at least 200 snaps in 2025, Woods was graded as the 169th-best overall EDGE in the country by PFF.
Tre Wilson III - No. 9 ranked Wide Receiver
Tre Wilson is going to be one of those “What if” players for the Gators because it just never seemed like Billy Napier knew what to do with him. The same as Wilson is that once Napier was gone, he broke out with a monster game against Georgia, only to have ankle surgery after the game.
If Wilson can wind up with a wide-open offense, we are not ruling out a 1,000-yard season for 2026.
Hayden Hansen - No. 10 ranked Tight End
With respect to our friends at Saturday Blitz, if Hayden Hansen is the 10th-best tight end in the transfer portal, it is more a commentary on the lack of quality tight ends in the portal than it is that Florida loses a dynamic player.
And it’s not that Hansen personally did anything wrong or wasn’t trying his best, but he became emblematic of the plodding Napier offense that refused to put its best playmakers on the field. Hansen wasn’t a receiving threat, and he was barely useful as a blocker (graded as the 165th pass-blocking tight end by PFF and the 112th run-blocking tight end).