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Is Lagway ready to be a star?

In a moment Florida fans have been salivating over for almost two years, true freshman QB D.J. Lagway is going to get his first start against Samford.

Lagway committed to Billy Napier and the Gators in early December of 2022. It wasn’t too long afterwards that Napier closed the 13th ranked recruiting class nationally (5th in the SEC) for his second recruiting class. At the time, I wrote that it was a “Dan Mullen recruiting class” and that wasn’t a compliment.

Here’s the takeaway from that article, which seems fairly prescient given where things stand after the loss to Miami:

“That’s really the issue with Graham Mertz coming in as a transfer. He might be a perfectly serviceable QB in Billy Napier’s offense. But serviceable only works when you’re Kelly Bryant with a stacked Clemson defense.

Florida needs a star at the position. Whether that’s Mertz, Max Brown, Jack Miller or eventually D.J. Lagway, Napier has to hit.”

Well, we’ve come to a point where Max Brown and Jack Miller are no longer with the program. Graham Mertz played pretty well last year but his limitations as he tried to go downfield against the Hurricanes came to the fore. So we’re down to Lagway.

Often there is concern about throwing a true freshman into the fold early. You might ruin his confidence, especially if he’s still learning the offense. Nobody wants to be the coach who holds back a sure-fire star.

But Napier doesn’t have that luxury anymore. With Mertz out with a concussion and the faceplant against Miami, this season has to answer the question we’ve all been asking since 2022:

Is Lagway ready to be a star?

What we know

We’ve been over this before, but it’s probably worth reiterating. We know that Lagway isn’t just a high-level QB. His stats suggest he has a one-in-two chance of being a very good QB and a one-in-three chance of being a star.

Lagway threw 247 passes as a sophomore in high school and completed 55.5 percent of those. That jumped to 67 percent on 200 attempts his junior year, with a corresponding jump in yards per attempt (6.4 to 10.4). Both of those stats jumped again in his senior season (72.1%, 11.5 yards per attempt) as Lagway threw for 58 TDs and was named Gatorade Player of the Year.

We also know that QBs who have “it” show that very early on. Way back in 2017 when I started this site, I wrote about Emory Jones and what you would be able to tell from his first three starts as a Gator by looking at other QBs ranked similarly and how their initial play compared to their final play.

The takeaway was that when QBs come in, they play very close to what their career level is going to be. That’s exactly what happened to Jones, whose first year as a starter yielded a QB rating of 141.2, which closely matches his career rating of 137.4.

All of this means we should be able to tell early on about Lagway, and while he had limited snaps against Miami, I think there’s actually enough there to make some conclusions.

This is the easiest read Lagway will ever see. His receiver (Tre Wilson, #3) is running a slant against man-coverage. There is a deep safety (circled) who is going to drop, and there’s no danger nearby because the outside linebacker is lined up in a pass rush position.

The result is that so long as he gets the ball out quickly, it will be an easy pitch-and-catch. That’s exactly what we see, as Lagway leads Wilson away from the defender to be able to maximize his yards after the catch.

This one is a little bit more complicated. It is the same route – this time on the other side of the formation – for Wilson. The deep safety suggests man-coverage again. But this time the WILL linebacker is lined up closer to Wilson. It’s the same read for Lagway, but he has to get this one out just as quickly and has to protect Wilson by leading him a little bit more up-field. It’s subtle, but Lagway does appear to do that, delivering the ball to Wilson with the ability to immediately cut up-field.

This is the play that perhaps should both please Gators fans the most and help them understand where Lagway needs to further develop. It’s the same play call, but the corner is playing way off Wilson. If you’re going to give him that much room, it should be an easy throw. The supposition is that Miami is going to drop the sticks and try to tackle Wilson short of the first down (since it’s third-and-12) and that Florida is okay with trying to get the first down that way.

That’s exactly what we see as the corner drops to the sticks. However, the safety darts up to take away Lagway’s throwing lane and this could have very easily been a pick-six, so it’s a great sign that Lagway saw this and pulled the ball down.

But Lagway has an outlet. Running back Treyaun Webb (#5) is open in the flat and can get a running start since Miami dropped all of its defenders. Instead, Lagway scrambles around and essentially throws the ball away when he runs out of time.

Would Webb have gotten the first down? Probably not. But Florida was willing to accept Trey Wilson in space on a throw in front of the sticks, so Webb in that situation isn’t a poor alternative given the developments.

This play has gotten a lot of attention because of the pulling tackle. I agree that it is ludicrous that Florida is pulling the guard and tackle here given how the play turns out, but I’m not sure that’s on Billy Napier. With the caveat that I don’t know how these guys are coached and what the exact call is, here’s what I think happened.

Miami has three down lineman and a linebacker/edge rusher to the boundary side. They then have the MIKE linebacker lined up five yards deep directly across from Lagway (arrow on the edge rusher and MIKE). So answer me this? Who is on the field (left) side of the formation to stop a run?

Lagway fakes the handoff to running back Jaden Baugh (#13) and is overwhelmed by the pass rush. This doesn’t look to be an run-pass option (RPO), but given the tilt of the defense towards the boundary, there has to be a check here. Lagway either needs to check protections because he likes the matchup he sees on the outside and wants to take a shot. Or Lagway needs to check to a run because he likes that matchup and his pulling offensive linemen give him a numbers advantage on that side.

Personally, I would have liked to have seen him check protections (there were still 24 seconds on the play clock at the snap) and taking a shot late in the game is probably the play. But what you can’t do is not adjust the protection and not adjust the play with this alignment. It’s not just that center Jake Slaughter (#66) can’t get over to block the pass rushers. It’s that you’re asking Slaughter to block two pass rushers, which is never going to end well.

So this begs the question: who is at fault? It might be Lagway because he didn’t check into the right protection. It might be Napier for not teaching him or giving the freedom to do so. Or it might be on Baugh, who perhaps is supposed to abort the fake and help his teammate in pass protection to the right.

Without knowing the exact play call and how Napier teaches things, we can’t be completely sure where the blame lies. I lean more towards Lagway, but there’s really no way to be completely sure.

Takeaway

So is Lagway ready to be a star?

Well, he clearly has the tools to do the job. I didn’t show it here, but he had a really nice run when the defense dropped into a zone shell and not only did he get the yards they were giving him, but he juked a defender and got a first down.

He got the ball out quickly and on-time when his first read was open, a must for any QB. Those passes were accurately thrown and even had a little bit of nuance to them (i.e. the one he led Wilson on a little bit to keep from leading him right to the linebacker).

When the first read is taken away, or when the defensive alignment calls for a check, I have more doubts. Against Samford that probably won’t be much of an issue. The Gators receivers should be good enough to win some battles even if Lagway makes the wrong read. The next week against Texas A&M though I would expect to see a lot of post-snap alignment shifts to try to confuse Lagway into making mistakes (assuming Mertz isn’t back at that point).

It’s an interesting question: is Lagway ready to be a star? Taking an in-depth look at his snaps against Miami, I’m encouraged by what I see. He may not be 1996 Danny Wuerffel right away, but there is enough there already to believe Lagway can be special.

But I think perhaps the more important point is that it doesn’t really matter whether Lagway is ready. Because of where the program sits after the loss to Miami, the injury to Mertz, and the tenor around the program, that’s what will be required to keep the status-quo.

That’s not really fair to Lagway, but such is life in the SEC and life as the Gatorade Player of the Year. Lagway ostensibly came to Gainesville because he believed he could be the savior that Gator fans were looking for. He’ll get his chance to start etching his name in the record books on Saturday against Samford.

It may be here sooner than we expected, but we all knew this day was coming. It’s not hyperbole to say that what Lagway makes of it will determine the future of the Gators program.