Tag: Gators in the NFL

Winners and Losers: Week 5 roundup of Florida Gators in the NFL

Take a look at how former Florida Gators played in the NFL, including an overdue performance from Atlanta Falcons tight end Kyle Pitts.

There are 29 active NFL players who attended the University of Florida and 24 of them have a starting job this season.

Week 5 saw a lot of success and letdowns from Gators across the league, including Atlanta Falcons tight end Kyle Pitts and speedy Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Kadarius Toney.

Quarterback Anthony Richardson has been having trouble staying on the field with the Indianapolis Colts, getting injured for the third time in four starts. Meanwhile, down in Tampa Bay, quarterback Kyle Trask is learning and sitting behind Baker Mayfield.

There were plenty of individual winners and losers in the NFL last week, but let’s take a look at the best and worst performances of Florida Gators in the NFL.

Former Gator CB Kaiir Elam makes first postseason interception in crucial moment for Bills

Florida fans already knew, but now the whole country knows about Kaiir Elam after a big-time play in Buffalo’s Sunday win over the Dolphins.

Former Florida cornerback [autotag]Kaiir Elam[/autotag] made the biggest play of his young NFL career on Sunday night during the Buffalo Bills‘ wildcard round win over the Miami Dolphins.

With his team down 24-20, Elam intercepted Skylar Thompson at Miami’s 30-yard line and set up a go-ahead score five snaps late. The Bills went on to win the game 34-31, but it was Elam’s interception that allowed Buffalo to regain the momentum lost at halftime. It’s the rookie’s second career interception after securing his first in Week 5 against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Buffalo selected Elam in the first round of the 2022 NFL draft with the No. 23 overall pick. He played three years at Florida and made an impact from Day 1 as a true freshman in a thin secondary. He left the Swamp with 79 career tackles (52 solo), 26 pass deflections, six interceptions and one fumble recovery.

The Wildcard Round was Elam’s best showing in the NFL to date, according to Pro Football Focus. PFF gave him an 88.1 grade on defense and an 88.0 grade in coverage in the night. Prior to the game, Elam had not recorded a single grade above 79.1 in 12 games as a rookie.

The Bills are set to face the Cincinnati Bengals at 3 p.m. EST on Sunday in the Divisional Round. That means a rookie Gator will be advancing to the conference championship with [autotag]Zachary Carter[/autotag] on Cincy.

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Gators tied for the most players on active Super Bowl rosters

Only LSU has as many players on the Rams’ and Bengals’ rosters.

Given Florida’s struggles over the last decade, you would be forgiven for not grouping it in with the top pro-producing programs. But the Gators have still had several former players find a lot of success at the next level, and many of those players just so happen to be on the two teams facing off in Super Bowl LVI in two weeks.

After a wild championship weekend, the Cincinnati Bengals will take on the Los Angeles Rams on the latter’s home field, and there will be five Gators players on the active roster for that game, tied for the most of any school with LSU.

On the Bengals, that includes kicker Evan McPherson, a rookie fifth-round pick, who has now hit game-winning kicks in the last two rounds of the playoffs. Joining McPherson on Cincinnati’s roster is former UF offensive lineman Fred Johnson, who has been on the team since 2020, and Vernon Hargreaves III a former first-round pick who has played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Houston Texans.

On the other side, the Rams have a pair of former Gators at the skill positions. Van Jefferson finished second on the team in receiving yards after Cooper Kupp, while Brandon Powell, who has bounced around the league since joining it in 2018, is the starting returner and has a punt return touchdown this season.

Florida’s football program may be in the midst of a tough time, but it continues to produce NFL players consistently, and a good number of them will be playing for the highest honor in football on Feb. 13.

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Former Gators kicker Evan McPherson named AFC Special Teams Player of the Month

McPherson hit a career-long 58-yard field goal two weeks ago.

Expectations for former Florida kicker Evan McPherson heading into his NFL career were about as high as you will ever see for a specialist entering the league. He was drafted in the fifth round by the Cincinnati Bengals, becoming the first and only kicker selected in the 2021 NFL draft.

He was the most accurate kicker in SEC history during his collegiate career, and that success has translated to the NFL. He is 26 of 31 on field goals while also making 42 of 44 extra points. He has hit multiple game-winning kicks in his first season, and for his efforts over the last four games, he was named the AFC’s Special Teams Player of the Month.

In the month of December, McPherson was 9 of 11 on field goals and hit the longest of his career so far, a 58-yarder against the Denver Broncos on Dec. 19 where he took advantage of the thinner air at Mile High Stadium.

Kicking skills don’t always translate from college to the NFL, but McPherson was one of the most reliable collegiate kickers you will find, and he’s shaping up to have a lengthy career in the NFL, as well.

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Las Vegas Raiders tight end Darren Waller offers to mentor Tim Tebow

Pro Bowl Las Vegas Raiders tight end Darren Waller said he’d be open to helping Tebow with the position transition.

Tim Tebow may have missed the opportunity to work with some of the league’s best tight ends at the “Tight End University,” camp run by George Kittle and Greg Olsen, but it seems he may be able to receive some help with his game, after all.

Pro Bowl Las Vegas Raiders tight end Darren Waller, who was among the TEU attendees, said that making the transition to tight end, a position Tebow hasn’t played since his freshman year of high school, wouldn’t be easy.

“It’s definitely not going to be easy,” Waller told TMZ Sports. “Changing positions at any level, not to mention the professional level, is going to be difficult. Football’s in his blood, so I feel like he’ll find a way. He’s physical. He’s athletic. I wish him nothing but the best going forward. It’s a tough transition. I was getting my butt kicked when I first moved to tight end. You just stick with it and grind through the process and things get better.”

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A receiver in college at Georgia Tech and at the beginning of his NFL career, Waller moved to tight end at the professional level, as well. But that’s a much more natural transition than going from quarterback to tight end, and Tebow’s work is cut out for him. Luckily, he may not have to do it alone.

Waller didn’t hesitate to say he would help Tebow out if the 33-year-old Jacksonville Jaguar were open to it. Though catching passes was more natural for Waller than it is for Tebow, the former said his learning curve with blocking was probably similar to Tebow’s.

“If he thinks he can learn from me, then I would love to help him and help make his transition smoother,” Waller said. “I tried to find any information I could from watching guys play or asking people when I moved [positions], so I’d love to continue to pass on [information] and help him become a better player.

“You’re used to catching passes and getting open, but the blocking transition, we’re probably facing the same mountain as when I started to where he’s started,” Waller said. “It’s a whole different game, but he should buy into the technique and have a want to do it.”

Signing Tebow was an offseason gamble for a Jaguars team that desperately needs more tight-end help. He’s been considered a long shot to make the team, but it seems he’ll have some resources available if he’s truly committed to improving at his new position.

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Where Kyle Pitts ranks in BetMGM’s NFL Rookie of the Year odds

He could very well be the primary target in the passing game for quarterback Matt Ryan, and his pure talent makes him arguably the biggest sure-thing from the entire draft.

Former Florida tight end Kyle Pitts enters the NFL as perhaps the most hyped tight end prospect of all time. As the fourth overall pick in the 2021 draft, he was the highest tight end to be selected since the common era of the NFL draft began in 1967.

The tight end is becoming an increasingly valuable position, with the elite options in the league producing on the same level as No. 1 receivers. That’s certainly the level of production the Atlanta Falcons will hope for after they traded arguably the best player to ever play for the franchise in receiver Julio Jones.

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It seems the oddsmakers in Vegas expect him to. According to the latest Rookie of the Year odds from BetMGM, Pitts has the third-best chances, sitting at 8-1. Only two players have better odds: first-overall pick Trevor Lawrence and Najee Harris, the running back from Alabama the Pittsburgh Steelers selected in the first round.

Here’s what The Athletic’s Vic Tafur said about Pitts’ potential candidacy.

Tight ends, though, would argue that it’s their league. The Chiefs’ Travis Kelce is one of the bigger stars in the NFL, the 49ers’ George Kittle is not far behind, and 40 of them just gathered in Nashville for a “Tight End University.” And now in the Falcons’ Kyle Pitts, we have the best tight end prospect in the history of the league. Picked fourth in the draft, Pitts could become the second tight end to win rookie of the year, joining Mike Ditka in 1961.

The 6-foot-6, 245-pound Pitts has 4.44 40-speed and a 98th percentile wingspan (83 3/8 inch), and he averaged 4.91 yards per route run against man coverage last season at Florida. He will get a lot of targets — it’s no wonder Julio Jones wanted out of town so badly.

Pitts’ rookie contract already gives him more guaranteed money than any other tight end in the league, so it doesn’t exactly seem unfair to expect him to perform at least on a similar level to the best players at the position.

He could very well be the primary target in the passing game for quarterback Matt Ryan, and his pure talent makes him arguably the biggest sure-thing from the entire draft.

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Tim Tebow would have made major bank off NIL in college

The former Florida quarterback would have raked in the cash as a collegiate player if he could have accepted endorsement deals.

The college football landscape changed forever on Thursday, as players were allowed to begin profiting off their name, image and likeness for the first time ever. Already, players across the country and in different sports have announced endorsement deals with companies.

But this reversal of the NCAA’s previously hardline policy on athlete compensation raises an interesting question: How much money could some of college football’s previous star players have made if this system was in place during their time?

Well, there’s been a lot of star players with large followings to come through the college level, but perhaps no player has ever fostered such a large fanbase at the collegiate level as Tim Tebow did.

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Famous for his work both on the field as a Heisman Trophy winner and two-time national champion and off it through his philanthropic work, Tebow has managed to stay relevant for more than a decade after his career at Florida ended despite limited professional success.

When the Jacksonville Jaguars signed Tebow as a tight end this offseason, his jersey led the NFL store in sales within 24 hours. The No. 85 jersey listed for sale wasn’t even necessarily a permanent number for Tebow, but the demand was clearly there.

CBS Sports’ Tom Fornelli wrote about how much Tebow would have benefited from being allowed to profit off NIL.

Consider for a moment that Tim Tebow had not played a snap in the NFL since the 2012 season, and yet that did not preclude him from getting a chance to play tight end for the Jacksonville Jaguars this summer. Consider that, before this opportunity, Tebow was able to convince MLB teams to give him a shot as a baseball player despite not having played baseball since his junior year of high school. He then played 306 minor league games over four seasons while occasionally taking time away to fulfill his media duties, playing in the Mets organization before retiring. Why has Tebow been given these chances? Because he’s not just Tim Tebow, he’s Tim Tebow: The All-American Boy. Now, imagine what Tebow would have been able to do with that brand if he’d been able to capitalize on it while still in college winning national titles and Heisman Trophies at Florida.

There was certainly a lot of money left on the table for Tebow in college, but considering the professional contracts, endorsement arrangements and television deals he has signed since moving on from UF, he’s probably doing alright.

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Time running out for New York to extend star safety Marcus Maye

If the Jets don’t reach a new deal with Marcus Maye by July 15, he will play the 2021 season on the franchise tag at $10.6 million.

Former Florida safety Marcus Maye has been nothing but productive since the New York Jets drafted him in the second round back in 2017. In his 54 games, he has 266 tackles, 22 passes defensed and six interceptions.

But the Jets already lost one star safety in former sixth overall pick Jamal Adams who demanded a trade when he couldn’t agree to terms with the team on an extension, a request that was eventually granted last offseason. It seems they may be about to use another.

With Maye’s rookie contract set to expire after last season, the Jets placed the franchise tag on him on March 9. The two sides have until July 15 to agree to an extension, or Maye will be owed $10.6 million in 2021, which would likely be his final season with the team.

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ESPN’s Rich Cimini wrote about what a potential deal for Maye could look like. Here’s the kind of deal he thinks the Jets will be looking to hand out.

The Jets probably see it this way: Based on experience and production, Maye’s contract should be in line with that of Cleveland Browns safety John Johnson, who hit free agency in March and signed for three years, $33.75 million — $11.25 million per year. The contract includes a $20 million guarantee.

However, he thinks Maye will be looking for more than that, potentially a deal that puts him in line with the league’s elite safeties.

Chances are, Maye is looking for something in the neighborhood of $14 million per year, an APY that would put him in a tie for fifth among safeties. He can argue he’s entitled to that much because, by definition, a franchise tag is the average of the top five salaries at the position. The bar was raised recently by the Denver Broncos‘ Justin Simmons ($15.25 million APY), and it will go higher when Adams lands his extension from the Seattle Seahawks.

New York hoped that the hiring of new coach Robert Saleh would fix a lot of the cultural issues that led to Adams’ departure, and what happens with Maye could be a canary in the coal mine. If the two can’t agree on a long-term deal, it wouldn’t be a great sign for the direction of the franchise.

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