Evaluating Florida 2026 QB commit Will Griffin
When Will Griffin committed to Florida on Saturday, I was excited but not overly so. After all, this is a guy ranked 89th in the 247Sports composite and he isn’t coming to campus until 2026. A lot can happen between now and then.
However, after taking a closer look I’m much more excited about this commitment. That is for two main reasons.
The first is that Griffin is from Tampa, Florida. These are the kids that Billy Napier – and any successful Florida head coach – has to get. Quarterbacks in the top-100 of the recruiting rankings are a fairly rare thing. There are only six QBs who fit that profile for this most recent 2024 recruiting class, and none of them were from Florida. That meant Florida had to go outside the state to bring in D.J. Lagway from Willis, TX.
Now, I’m certainly a fan of going to Texas for Lagway, but constantly going outside your own state to bring in talent is a waste of resources when you are the flagship school in a state as recruiting-rich as Florida. Griffin may be a sign that the tide is starting to turn in-state at Florida as the NIL organization finally finds its footing. If that’s true, then we’re about to see a major uptick in recruiting overall. And if that’s true, it’s going to coincide with Florida keeping players like Griffin at home.
But the second reason I’m more excited about this commitment than at first glance is that I looked at Griffin’s high school statistics.
The first thing you’ll notice is that I have stats included from 8th grade. That’s because Griffin was playing varsity football at Northside Christian. For context, Trinity Christian won that division in the 2021-2022 season and had a junior running back named Treyaun Webb.
He then took over as a starter in week five at Tampa Jesuit as a true freshman and then started all of last season. You can see the jump in both attempts and completion percentage, and that’s where I get excited. A true sophomore completing nearly 68 percent of his passes indicates that this is a guy who is starting to read defenses.
Of course, the one caveat to that is the 9.4 yards per attempt. That is a little bit low for an elite prospect (and I suspect part of why he’s top-100 rather than top-30). You don’t have to go too far to find a player with a similar high school profile and recruiting ranking (Jarrett Guarantano, Drew Lock and Ricky Town are decent comps) who struggled to put everything together at the college level. Of course, C.J. Stroud and Tua Tagovailoa also come pretty close to fitting the profile as well.
Griffin also has thrown a lot of INTs, but when you look at the film, you see why that is.
On this play, Griffin shows great pocket awareness by stepping up in the pocket to escape pressure rather than trying to escape directly to the outside. By stepping up, this allows him to get outside the pocket and deliver the throw. This is the kind of thing that prevents sacks and allows big plays to develop.
Griffin completely ignores his check-down (circled) as he looks for a place to throw the ball. Instead, he throws a dart to a streaking wide receiver down the sideline. That receiver has very little separation from the corner covering him and there is a safety coming over to the sideline to help. That means Griffin’s throw has to be perfect to execute the play. It is.
This kind of gunslinger mentality is going to lead to some interceptions. But it’s also going to lead to a lot of big plays. It’s important to remember though that when it comes to the statistics or film analysis, I’m comparing Griffin’s sophomore season to those other players’ senior seasons. That means this is still a player with significant room to grow for the next two seasons.
And that’s the point of this write-up and my enthusiasm. Because Griffin still has room to develop, Florida just got a commitment from a player from the state of Florida at the most important position on the field who has the potential to develop into an elite-level prospect.
That’s how you build a winning program.
2024 Florida Preview Magazine
If you liked this brief write-up and evaluation of Will Griffin, know that there is a much more detailed analysis of D.J. Lagway in the magazine that will let you know what I think of him as a prospect and how his high school stats and film project his performance at the next level.
