Three relevant questions for Florida Football as they are set to hire Deron Wilson

With multiple outlets reporting that Florida Football is going to hire Deron Wilson as their new defensive backs coach to replace Will Harris, there is a cache of questions Gator fans have. At the core of those question marks is whether or not Wilson is a solid hire since he has a mostly unknown profile.

We here at Hail Florida Hail don't have that answer, but we do have some questions that seem relevant, and as we always do, we are just going to ask them out loud.

Was Arkansas really that good in pass defense in 2023?

The headline and calling card for Wilson is that in 2023, Arkansas only gave up 202 passing yards per game. That was 32nd in the country and one of the best marks for the Razorbacks in a decade.

They dropped to 111th in the country in 2024, but the warning signs they were going to dip were always there.

Part of the reason why Arkansas was 32nd in 2023 was they faced the third-fewest passing attempts of any team in the country.

Now, one might say that was a sign opposing teams feared the Arkansas secondary, but in 2023, the Razorbacks were 101st in passing yards against per attempt, giving up 7.9 yards per attempt. Arkansas was one spot ahead of Colorado in this metric in 2023, a team that was notorious for their inability to stop the pass.

So....

Is being an SEC position coach an upgrade from being a Group of Five DC?

We asked a similar question of Vinnie Sunseri after he left his defensive coordinator job at Jacksonville State to come to Florida, but it seems weird that Wilson would leave a coordinator job to be a position coach.

And unlike Sunseri, Wilson doesn't get a semantics-based "Co-DC" title attached to his name.

Maybe the pay is better, or perhaps just being in the SEC at all costs is the way to go. But if the latter is the case, then why leave the SEC in the first place?

Is the lack of experience on the coaching staff going to burn Florida at the start of the season once again?

Wilson might actually be a good coach, but something of note is the limited SEC experience the Florida coaching staff on the defensive side is going to have in 2025.

Wilson spent one year as an analyst with Florida and the previously mentioned two years with Arkansas. Sunseri has just been an actual safety coach for just one year. Inside linebackers coach Robert Bala has just two years of Power Five experience.

Even for all the narrative of Ron Roberts being a "grizzled veteran," 2025 will be only his 6th year of Power Four experience.

Everyone has to start somewhere, but Florida had an inexperienced staff last year too, and it could be argued that they started slow out of the gate because they didn't have the experience to know what was needed to be good in the SEC.