Noah Keeter – Syndication Server

Florida football players set SEC Fall Academic Honor Roll record

The University of Florida is a top educational institution in many ways these days.

The SEC announced their 2022 Fall Academic Honor Roll on Thursday, with the Florida Gators football team setting a conference record. Of the Orange and Blue’s 113 student-athletes that received Academic Honor Roll distinctions, 62 were football players, breaking the previous conference record of 55 players set back in 2020.

The 2022 SEC Fall Academic Honor Roll is based on grades from the 2022 spring, summer, and fall terms. Of the 62, 27 student-athletes earned a grade point average of 3.4 or higher, with [autotag]Noah Keeter[/autotag] and [autotag]Marco Ortiz[/autotag] recording a 4.0. Thirty-three of the players named received the honor for at least the second time.

Here are the criteria needed to be named to the SEC Academic Honor Role:

(1) A student-athlete must have a grade point average of 3.00 or above for either the preceding academic year (two semesters or three quarters) or have a cumulative grade point average of 3.00 or above at the nominating institution.

(2) If a student-athlete attends summer school, his/her grade point average during the summer academic term must be included in the calculation used to determine eligibility for the Academic Honor Roll.

(3) Student-athletes eligible for the Honor Roll include those receiving an athletics scholarship, recipients of an athletics award (i.e., letter winner), and non-scholarship student-athletes who have been on a varsity team for two seasons.

(4) Prior to being nominated, a student-athlete must have successfully completed 24 semester or 36 quarter hours of non-remedial academic credit toward a baccalaureate degree at the nominating institution.

(5) The student-athlete must have been a member of a varsity team for the sport’s entire NCAA Championship segment.

Popular players to be named to the list includes [autotag]O’Cryus Torrence[/autotag], [autotag]Anthony Richardson[/autotag], and [autotag]Jason Marshall Jr[/autotag]., among others. The record is in line with the university’s recent marketing of being a top ten public institution in the country, along with having a top ten athletic program in the country.

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2022 Florida Football Season Preview: Tight Ends

Florida’s tight end room has seen a complete overhaul since the end of last season. Here’s a look at the group heading into 2022.

Next up in Gators Wire’s position-by-position breakdown of the 2022 Florida Gators football roster is the tight end room.

Last year’s starter [autotag]Kemore Gamble[/autotag] was one of the many players that left the team via the transfer portal. While he suits up for the UCF Knights this season, the Gators will test out some new names at the position. Senior [autotag]Keon Zipperer[/autotag] is the returning player in the room with the most experience, but a trio of defensive players made the switch to tight end after two others went down with an injury in the spring.

Billy Napier added a pair of tight ends in the 2022 recruiting cycle too, so there’s plenty of depth on the team at this point. The big task for Napier will be to figure out which players deserve the most playing time. Most of these guys are relatively unproven, and Napier likes to run a lot of two-tight-end sets to engage the run game.

There seems to be a clear first and second team in place as the season draws near, but an injury or two could give some rotational pieces an opportunity to shine.

Here’s a look at the nine tight ends listed on the 2022 Florida Gators fall roster.

Injuries are forcing Florida football to get creative this spring

Florida has been forced to be creative and shuffle its personnel around after suffering injuries at several different positions.

Coach [autotag]Billy Napier[/autotag]’s offensive formations at Louisiana frequently featured tight ends. He is having difficulty implementing that philosophy with the Gators because of the injuries that piled up at the position.

Napier said that he feared that redshirt freshman Gage Wilcox has suffered a ‘career-ending injury’ during practice earlier this spring on Thursday. Florida was already thin at the position after it was reported that sophomore [autotag]Jonathan Odoms[/autotag] and redshirt freshman [autotag]Nick Elksnis[/autotag] will miss the rest of spring ball due to injuries. Senior [autotag]Keon Zipperer[/autotag] is currently the lone active scholarship tight end on the roster.

The amount of injuries that the Gators have suffered at tight end and other positions this spring has forced Napier and staff to be creative.

In order to mitigate depth issues, Florida has drastically shuffled its personnel. It moved senior defensive end [autotag]Dante Zanders[/autotag] back to tight end, which he last played in 2019. The coaching staff also switched redshirt junior [autotag]Noah Keeter[/autotag] to the position from linebacker. Finally, defensive tackle [autotag]Griffin McDowell[/autotag] has caught some passes this week to help out the unit.

Napier said Florida is also struggling with depth at inside linebacker, safety and offensive line and only have enough bodies for a third team behind the starters and backups.

“We’re thin,” he said Thursday after the Gators wrapped up their first spring scrimmage. “When you have three guys get injured — scholarship players at a position that’s already a little thin — that throws a wrench in your plans.”

Florida added five midyear transfers in January and could potentially make that double-digits, according to Napier.

“I think we live in a new era, right?” he said about the transfer portal. “There’s certainly a new way of operating in college football,” he said. “You can anticipate us being very aggressive in the portal this spring. We need players. That window of time is coming. We anticipate doing a lot of business and we’re looking forward to it.”

Napier and the Gators are also planning to present five walk-ons with scholarships for the spring semester.

It’s all hands on deck for Florida right now as it continues to battle injuries.

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Florida’s TE room just got tighter after ‘potentially career-ending’ injury

Terrible news for Gators fans and Gage Wilcox. We hope the best for the young man.

The tight end position has been an area where Florida football is running thin this spring and things just took a turn for the worst on Thursday. Head coach [autotag]Billy Napier[/autotag] announced that redshirt freshman [autotag]Gage Wilcox[/autotag] suffered what he called a “potentially career-ending” injury during an early practice, joining redshirt freshman tight end [autotag]Nick Elksnis[/autotag] and sophomore tight end [autotag]Jonathan Odom[/autotag] in the medical tent.

According to Swamp247, Wilcox had missed practice over the past four sessions but could not be ascertained exactly when the injury occurred. When asked about the event, Napier offered, “It’s very unfortunate. That’s part of the game though.”

It is also still unclear exactly what the nature of the injury was.

The absence of Wilcox, Elksnis and Odom leaves only [autotag]Keon Zipperer[/autotag] as the lone active scholarship tight end on the roster this spring. However, the recent squeeze at the position has Napier and his staff trying out senior defensive end [autotag]Dante Zanders[/autotag] and walk-on junior linebacker [autotag]Noah Keeter[/autotag] as possible replacements.

The former was recruited as a three-star at the position out of high school and appeared there a total of 15 times in his freshman years. The latter was a two-way player in high school, with tight end being his role on the offensive side of the ball. So at the very least, there is some experience behind that shallow depth.

You can count on the Gators taking a serious look at the transfer portal in the coming weeks to help fill this gaping void. In Napier’s own words: “When you have three guys that get injured at a position that was already thin, it throws a little wrench in your plan.”

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2020 Florida Gators Football Profile Card: Noah Keeter

This is a player profile card for outside linebacker transfer from UCLA Noah Keeter, who returns home to Gainesville to play for UF in 2020.

Name: Noah Keeter

Number: 48

Position: Outside Linebacker

Class: Redshirt Freshman

Height: 6’5″

Weight: 224 lbs

Hometown: Gainesville, Fla.

High School: Buchholz High School

Twitter: @NoahKeeter_25

2019 statistics:

Did not play for the UCLA Bruins

Overview:

A standout for F.W. Buchholz High School in Gainesville, Keeter was rated as a three-star prospect, the No. 94 weak-side defensive end and a top-240 player in the state in the 2019 class.

Racking up 153 tackles (26 for loss), 22.5 sacks and an interception during his final two seasons with the Bobcats, he committed to Chip Kelly’s UCLA Bruins, located roughly 2,400 miles northwest, on January 12, 2019, the day after taking his official visit, and signed his National Letter of Intent (LOI) less than one month later.

He did not appear in any games during his lone year in Los Angeles and entered the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) transfer portal on December 2.

On January 3, 2020, he announced he would be coming home and joining Dan Mullen’s program as a preferred walk-on. Coincidentally, this was the same day running back Lorenzo Lingard, a five-star in the 2018 cycle and former Miami Hurricane, shared he, too, would be joining the Gators.

Profiling as more of an outside linebacker than defensive end at the collegiate level, Keeter did not appear on Florida’s first two-deep defensive depth chart, released on September 21, but has four years of eligibility remaining to carve out a role for himself.

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