Billy Napier and his army of coaches continue to grind away on the college football recruiting trail in search of the best the nation has to offer from the prep ranks. Much of the focus of late has been on the 2025 class but Florida has not been neglecting the following cycle either.
One of the top quarterbacks among the sophomore high school ranks is four-star passer Brady Hart from Cocoa (Florida) in the 2026 class. The 6-foot-4-180-pound signal-caller recently made a two-day visit to Gainesville and came away with a much better understanding of where he stands with the program early in his recruitment.
Hart spoke with Swamp247’s Blake Alderman after the visit and provided the following details.
“So I got in on Thursday and flew from South Bend right to the Gainesville airport at like 11:30 and went right straight to the facilities,” Hart told Swamp247. “I met with Coach (Ryan) O’Hara for a while, and just walked around and talked with him. He introduced himself to my dad, and then we got to tour the facilities.
“Talked with the nutritionist, strength and conditioning coach, and then went to quarterback meetings, team meetings, and then went to practice. I was on O’Hara and Coach (Billy) Napier’s hip the whole time at practice following them around. They would walk me through their plays and tell me the read before they called them. It was pretty sweet seeing the whole script.
“Got some time to talk with Napier after practice, and we got to really get to know him on a personal level. My dad enjoyed it a lot, and Coach Napier basically told us he wants us to be there and to be the quarterback in this class. That was surreal because it’s like a dream come true for me.”
“Friday was more on an in-depth meeting with Coach O’Hara. We talked about quarterback development and watched a lot of my film, and their film. It was sort of spliced together to show how I would fit into the system. I thought it was awesome, and a really cool experience. Seeing Coach O’Hara talk about all the different situations and plays. We run a similar system at my school that Florida does.”
“I thought it was really awesome to get to pick their brain about the game. They would challenge me too and my knowledge of the game. It was just awesome. I think it also spoke to their knowledge by seeing how guys like DJ [Lagway] and Graham [Mertz] have grown in their game from being there. It was cool to learn from them, and take little things from each of these visits to use in my game and push myself. You want to be valued, and get in-depth coaching, and they do that at Florida.”
“It was definitely a valued visit that I enjoyed a lot,” he said of the UF visit. “I am just going to keep going on these next couple of visits, and soak everything in. We are going to go back for another round of visits probably. Get like a top three, four, or five schools that we are really serious about, and then go back again. Then make the decision.”
“They definitely answered that question I had for them,” he said. “Really important to see that they are serious about me. Real cool visit. We are going to see these next several weeks. We are going to see if the effort put in. We are going to see how things build and where I stand on their board.”
Hart is ranked No. 110 overall and No. 9 at his position nationally according to the On3 industry ranking while Rivals has him rated at Nos. 49 and 4, respectively. On3’s Recruiting Prediction Machine gives the Notre Dame Fighting Irish an overwhelming 95.3% chance of signing him, followed by Florida (1.4%) and the Miami Hurricanes (1.2%).
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