5-star QB high on Florida following visit, moves up commitment date

Florida looks to be near the top of the list for five-star quarterback DJ Lagway following another game-day visit over the weekend.

Florida’s top quarterback target in the class of 2024, [autotag]DJ Lagway[/autotag], was in Gainesville over the weekend to see the Gators take on the LSU Tigers. Despite witnessing a UF loss, Lagway had an amazing time on his visit, according to On3‘s Sam Spiegelman.

“Florida this weekend was great,” Lagway said. It’s always great being around the coaching staff. It was a great atmosphere and being able to see the fans is always amazing because the amount of love they show is tremendous. It was just great to be back down in Florida.”

Lagway sees some of himself in Florida’s quarterback, [autotag]Anthony Richardso[/autotag]n, and that player comparison isn’t lost on the coaching staff. He’s their top guy for a reason, and the current scheme should be far more refined by the time Lagway arrives on campus.

Miller’s coach at Willis, Trent Miller, also spoke to On3 following his quarterback’s visit to Florida, and he spoke highly of the Gators’ recruiting approach.

“He’s raved about the environment in the Swamp and being a priority there,” Miller said Lagway. “There’s no way to say Florida hasn’t done the best job recruiting him. Everyone is doing a great job and you can’t miss from these colleges, these atmospheres, and these educations, but Florida has done a good job from a cultural standpoint. They blow him up on Twitter and they have fraternity and sorority houses hanging signs for ‘Lagway To the Swamp’ and 100,000 people screaming his name. They’ve done a good job letting him know he’s the dude we want and to make him feel at home.”

If there’s a school competing with Florida right now, it’s Clemson. Dabo Swinney is leading the charge himself and has the Tigers near the top of his list. Arkansas, LSU, Oklahoma and Texas A&M are candidates to round out a potential top five, and the clock is now officially ticking on Lagway’s recruitment. He originally planned to decide in April, but now he’s thinking that January might be better.

“It’s getting earlier,” Lagway said regarding his decision timeline. “I want to be able to get this going and start recruiting for my class. I wanna get to a few more schools and get the game-day atmosphere. These visits play a big part for me as I evaluate the schools I’m really looking into. After the season, I’ll take a couple of weeks to check out some schools.”

Lagway is ranked No. 30 overall on the 247Sports composite and is No. 5 among quarterbacks in the class of 2024. Interestingly, On3 has him ranked at No. 8 overall in the class and No. 2 among quarterbacks, but he only has four stars to his name. He should pick up that fifth star by his senior year, but Lagway will already be committed by then. Hopefully, to the University of Florida.

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Does Billy Napier have the edge on LSU’s Brian Kelly in his debut season?

Will Florida be better than LSU in 2022? Barrett Sallee seems to think so.

Florida football hit the reset button last fall when it fired former head coach [autotag]Dan Mullen[/autotag] and his staff, replacing them with [autotag]Billy Napier[/autotag] along with a cadre of coaches and other personnel. The regime change signaled not just a new skipper at the helm but also a complete change in how the program goes about its business — a culture change that has already rippled across campus to other sports.

Napier is not the only nascent coach in the nation next season as several big-name schools have had their own changing of the guard. Included on that list is Southeastern Conference rival LSU, which plucked away Notre Dame‘s head coach Brian Kelly after giving ol’ Ed Orgeron the boot following yet another lackluster performance in 2021. Many in the media have hailed the move for the bayou boys but maybe they have their focus on the wrong swamp.

CBS Sports’ Barrett Sallee recently published his opinion on the differences between Napier and Kelly, coming to the conclusion that the Gator will be mightier than the Tiger this coming fall in their debut campaigns — but perhaps not in the long term. Here is why Sallee thinks Napier has the edge.

While Kelly is more likely to have long-term success, Napier is better-positioned to see immediate success this season. He has a more stable foundation and an easier path to at least get the Gators back to relevance in the SEC.

Luckily, there will be a head-to-head contest and some transitive property opportunities to compare the two. Kelly will square off with Napier in The Swamp, and both the Tigers and the Gators will battle with Florida State and Tennessee in 2022. Both also travel to Texas A&M. But the SEC West is stacked, which will make it challenging for the Tigers to make a decent bowl game this year.

While Sallee makes a good point about the talent that the Gators currently have at their disposal — especially in the potential that Richardson possesses — neither school really has an easy path to success and one could argue that Florida’s schedule is harder despite the home/away splits. UF opens up against a top-five team in Utah with just USF and East Washington as their “soft” opponents while LSU has Southern, New Mexico and UAB to kick around.

Either way, a strong start would be a huge boon to the program, giving Napier the credibility he will need to bring in a top-level recruiting class in 2023. The entire Gator Nation is counting on him.

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