By Chris Marler
Calm down. Everyone.
It’s the time of the offseason where people are bored, starving for football, and even worse, starving for attention. That’s when the hottest, and most ridiculous, takes seem to take flight.
To be clear, I don’t believe that the title of this article falls under that category. Rather the belief that DJ Lagway is all of the sudden one of the best players in the entire country seems way too far ahead of its skis.
Lagway is very good. He may be great. And there’s no denying how incredible the skillset is or how elite his right arm can be. That being said, coming off a season where he completed under 60 percent of his passes and finished the year with 12 touchdowns and nine interceptions doesn’t equate to this level of hype.
Against SEC teams, Lagway had just one game where he completed over 53 percent of his passes. He also had a touchdown to interception ratio of 6:6. Granted, he will go into 2025 behind an offensive line that allowed the third fewest sacks in the SEC and will return four of five starters from a year ago. But what about everywhere else?
Florida will be breaking in new starters at almost every single skill position and not a single pass catcher with over 20 receptions from a season ago. That was also in an offense that ranked 64th or worse in every major offensive category: total offense, rushing offense, passing offense, and scoring offense. Those are numbers that have declined almost every year since Napier has arrived in Gainesville by the way.
Most importantly, Lagway and Florida are facing one of the most difficult schedules in the country once again. They have road games at LSU and Miami in the month of September. October kicks off with Texas and Texas A&M back-to-back. Then November brings Ole Miss, Tennessee, and Georgia in a four week span. Not only did eight of this year’s 12 opponents make a bowl game last year, but six of the 12 won nine games or more.
The Gators did bring a top ten recruiting class, but that’s accompanied by the worst transfer portal class in the SEC where they lost 20 players and managed to only bring in seven.
I’m pulling for DJ Lagway. I love his story, and I really love his commitment to both Florida and Billy Napier. I hated the fact that we talked about Billy Napier being on the hotseat since basically the moment he signed his contract at UF. Remember, the talk about him getting fired because of the 2024 schedule started before the 2023 season ever began.
That being said, with everything I just laid out, it feels like it’s time to at least pump the brakes a little on the DJ Lagway hype train.
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