Whittemore was increasingly viewed as a potential offseason departure since Oct. He made seven starts in 2021 but was sidelined for three weeks by an ankle injury. He was gaining playing time in 2020 when he missed five games with a punctured lung. Whittemore played 41 offensive snaps at slot receiver compared to 397 for Arizona State transfer Ricky Pearsall.Īt 6-4 and sporting a 35-inch vertical, Whittemore is a grad transfer with two years of eligibility and could be an intriguing pickup for another Power 5 program. A hometown product of Buchholz High, he accounted for 425 yards and two touchdowns on 33 career catches, only four of those receptions coming this season. WR Trent Whittemore: Within 48 hours of going through Senior Day ceremonies, the fourth-year junior announced he was leaving the team and transferring. He played 18 offensive snaps this season.Ī three-star recruit who flipped to Florida from Penn State, Elksnis is a 6-foot-6, 250-pounder who figures to draw Power 5 interest. Elksnis sustained a scapula injury in spring practice and recovered in time for the season only to suffer another upper-body injury after five games of action, primarily on special teams. TE Nick Elksnis: The second-year player out of Jacksonville announced plans to transfer Tuesday, by which time he had left the team. You have to go out and be more than a football player, you have to be a person as well.” Sapp discussed the message he took from Cox’s dismissal: “I don’t really know what came down to the decision, but you have to look at yourself in the mirror. I have so much love and respect for Brenton that people wouldn’t even understand.” He was an older guy when I came in and he took me under his wing. “Brenton is a great player and still one of my best friends. “Because that (dismissal) happened, we had to come in with a different type of edge because we are missing that piece,” said redshirt freshman defensive lineman Tyreak Sapp. He had a team-high eight tackles for loss through eight games and projects to be an NFL draft choice next spring, though character issues certainly will factor into his evaluation.Ĭoincidentally, Florida’s defense has delivered back-to-back winning efforts since its top pass rusher was banished. 29 loss to Georgia, encountered struggles with the previous staff at Florida and failed to meet expectations under Napier. “As long as your culture is healthy it’s not a problem.”ĭetails on the eight Gators who during the past month departed or publicly announced plans to transfer:Įdge Brenton Cox: The fifth-year senior, dismissed on the heels of the Oct. “You’re going to have some players along the way that maybe they see their kind of writing on the wall and make a decision to move forward, go somewhere else. “Attrition is healthy to some degree,” Napier said. 5 and runs for 45 days, though graduate transfers such as Whittemore can enter the portal anytime. The NCAA portal window for players opens Dec. That momentum could help as Napier aims to rapidly upgrade the roster in hopes of narrowing the gap behind teams like Georgia. It’s a big jigsaw puzzle.”įlorida (6-4, 3-4 SEC) is favored by 14.5 points at Vandy this week and figures to be in a tossup game next week against FSU before potentially aiming for a ninth win in a bowl. Roster management is tricky - Napier calls it “a big math problem that’s very fluid” - and requires frequent dialogue between coaches and players so that both sides are managing expectations.Īnd you’d like each of those to be the best they can be. Regarding players who have internally informed coaches of plans to leave after the season, they range from scout-teamers to contributors who “have a huge role” on game days. “They’ve got a certain level of commitment to that group and to what we started all the way back in the very beginning.” “We’ve got players that have told me that they are going to leave, but they’re not going to leave the team (in-season),” he said. Then there’s Napier’s perspective: Players showing allegiance to their current teammates by staying through season’s end. The perspective of the outgoing player stepping aside is understandable: They might be wary of an injury impacting their appeal to other programs, or they might be seeking to jump-start the next recruitment phase so as to expedite enrolling at a new school by January. “I think there’s a respect for the game to some degree relative to ‘I want to finish what I started.’” I don’t necessarily think that’s a positive,” Napier said Wednesday night without referencing any player by name. “I think it’s a shame sometimes when they do it before the season’s out. This touched Florida on Monday when second-string slot receiver Trent Whittemore entered the portal and left the team before the final two regular-season road games at Vanderbilt and Florida State. What vexes Napier is the trend of players around the country leaving in-season.
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