DJ Lagway commits to the Gators
D.J. Lagway just committed to be a Gator.
Those may be the most important words I will ever type out about the Billy Napier era at the University of Florida.
If that seems like hyperbole, it’s not meant to be. In fact, it’s almost verbatim what I said about Joe Burrow when Dan Mullen decided not to pursue the Ohio State transfer QB.
Lagway is a 5-star player (24th nationally overall) at the most important position on the field. He’s also committing at a time when his commitment could have implications for other potential commits in the 2024 recruiting class. He is the highest ranked player that Napier has convinced to come to Florida so far, and combined with Atlanta linebacker Myles Graham (30th nationally overall), Napier now has the foundation of a truly elite class if he can essentially replicate what he’s done in the 2023 class.
That’s no sure thing, as that class currently consists of 15 players in the top-300 of the rankings. But my criticism of that class has always been a lack of truly elite, 5-star talent. Myles Graham’s commitment started to make inroads against that criticism for the 2024 class, but his father played at Florida and decisions outside of just relationships and NIL could have played a role.
The Lagway commitment is a statement that Florida is coming on the recruiting trail, and it’s been a really long time since I’ve been able to write anything close to that about this program.
Analysis
Lagway isn’t a sure thing. No player is, especially at QB. But he is much closer to a sure thing than any other QB Florida has brought in for a long time.
These are the top-18 QBs recruited by Florida since 2000 (sorted by 247Sports player rating). There are two things that immediately jump out to me when looking at this list.
First, only the top-5 (excluding Lagway) players were rated in the top-30 nationally, which is a normal cutoff for 5-star players. Of those 5, every single one of them served as a starter to open a season. Three of them were starters on a national championship team. They also have accounted for two Heisman Trophies. Obviously, Cam Newton’s success came at Auburn, but from the perspective of “did he meet his recruiting expectations,” the answer is a resounding yes.
The second thing is that Ron Zook brought in Leak and Dickey. Urban Meyer brought in Tebow, Driskel, Newton and Brantley. It’s not until you get to Will Grier do you get to a QB not brought in either during or before the Meyer era. Jaden Rashada was on the high end of players brought in by the likes of Will Muschamp, Jim McElwain or Dan Mullen. Lagway is right there at the caliber of players brought in by Meyer.
From a performance perspective, Lagway has a lot of what you’d want to see as well. Here are what his high school stats look like thus far:
What we see is a player who didn’t start at all as a freshman, then played conservatively (17:2 TD:INT ratio) but unspectacularly (55.5% completions, 6.4 yards per attempt) his sophomore year and then took a huge jump his junior season (67% completions, 10.4 yards per attempt).
I’ve written a lot about high school QBs and how completion percentage translates, but most of the time I use senior year statistics because a lot of players make a big jump between their junior and senior seasons. Lagway just did that one year early. If he puts up similar numbers – or takes another leap forward – in his senior season then we can be confident that the jump he showed this season is real and sustainable.
When Rashada flipped to Florida just a few weeks ago, I gathered a bunch of data for QBs who were ranked in the top-100 of the recruiting rankings since 2015. Of the 48 players who fit that categorization, 13 of them were drafted (27%) and 7 went in the first round (15%), along with Heisman winner Bryce Young who definitely will get drafted and probably will go in the first round. That suggests that Florida has about a one-in-four shot that Rashada is going to turn into a draftable QB and better than a one-in-eight shot that he’ll be a star.
But what if we restrict that QB analysis to just the top-30 QBs in that same time-frame? We’re starting to deal with a smaller sample size for sure, as the list shrinks to 12. But of those 12 players, six (50%) of them have been drafted (assuming Young gets drafted) and four (33%) of them have been drafted in the first round (assuming Young goes that high).
So now we’re talking about a one-in-two shot that Lagway will be a good starter and a one-in-three shot that he’ll be a star.
That actually undersells the potential contribution of Lagway a little bit as well as Spencer Rattler and D.J. Uiagalelei still have an opportunity to be drafted when they decide to go pro. Indeed, the only players I consider busts on the list are Hunter Johnson and Blake Barnett, who never got major snaps behind center at Power-5 schools. Of course, both of those players averaged <60% completions in high school and aren’t great comparisons to Lagway.
The point is that Lagway is in a select group of players who end up successful more often than others.
Takeaways
There are a few takeaways from today’s announcement, but I’ll start with the most important one: Florida just got a commitment from a player who profiles as being a multiple-year starter and having a 1-in-3 shot at turning into a star.
I’ll be speaking more as early signing day arrives with regards to recruiting and what is necessary to be elite, but you don’t have to look too far into Florida’s history to see what happens when the QB is playing at an elite level. The 2020 team averaged nearly 40 points per game while Kyle Trask was finishing fourth in the Heisman voting.
Florida’s expected winning percentage in 2022 was at 55 percent based on its scoring differential (31.8 points per game vs. 28.8 ppg allowed). Bump the offensive performance up to 40 ppg and we would have expected the Gators to go 8-4 rather than 6-6 without any improvement on defense (not coincidently, that 2020 team went exactly 8-4 with a defense just about as bad as this year’s).
Factor in a defense that just has to improve given what we saw in 2022 and Lagway turning into an elite performer in 2024 or 2025 will give Florida a real shot at the final four, not just a 12-team playoff.
But beyond just his on-field abilities, Lagway’s commitment answers some of the doubts that have surrounded the entire Florida program for more than a decade at this point. It used to be that Florida got a lion’s share of the best recruits in any given year. Urban Meyer’s second class brought household names to Gainesville and helped win two championships, but since then the Gators have played second-fiddle to other programs throughout the country.
Napier has had opportunities to quell those doubts, first with potentially closing the deal on Harold Perkins and Jacoby Mathews in the 2022 class prior to National Signing Day and then making sure top priority Cormani McClain came to Gainesville. In both cases, Napier was unable to close the deal.
Perkins is already a monster at LSU. I get jealous every time I see them play and wonder what he would have looked like in Orange and Blue. I think McClain is a can’t miss prospect who’s going to get drafted in the first couple of rounds of the NFL Draft three years from now. But you don’t win national championships solely because of defensive end or cornerback play.
But you might because of the QB.
The commitment of Lagway solidifies Florida at the most important position on the field. It quells many of the doubts that elite players are going to choose other schools instead of the Gators. And it sets the stage for Napier to put together a monster class in 2024 to put Florida back amongst the truly elite players in the SEC and College Football.
I often say you don’t want to judge a recruiting class based on one player; that you want to take a class as a whole and analyze its overall quality to get a true feel for how it is going to perform. That is still true. Lagway’s commitment does not mean the mission is accomplished or that all of the recruiting work is done.
But if you read Lagway’s 247Sports recruiting profile, analyst Gabe Brooks compares Lagway to Tennessee’s Hendon Hooker. You know, the guy who just won SEC player of the year.
Florida got a lot better today. Napier answered a bunch of questions about himself and the program today. There’s still work to do, but with Lagway in the fold, Florida is much better positioned to get back among the elite programs in college football.
To quote one of our favorite coaches: Today, God is smiling on the Gators.