During the first round of the NFL draft, Florida coach Billy Napier will be with his former quarterback as an invited guest in Kansas City on Thursday night, when the player who may just be the future of the position at the pro level walks across the stage. If signal-caller Anthony Richardson meets his potential, he will maximize his skill set.
“When a player on your team is going to be a first-round pick, it’s hard to argue with them or convince them to come back,” Napier says. “Anthony would have benefited from another year of college football, but that doesn’t change the traits, the upside, the potential. I think most of the teams in the league feel how I feel, and that is this guy’s a freak of nature, a generational talent. And he basically set a precedent at the combine, destroying every measurable known to man for the quarterback position.”
When Florida has posted wins over its relatively recent history as a power program, it has done so with high-flying offenses, from Steve Spurrier’s Fun ’n’ Gun to Urban Meyer’s smashmouth spread. The Gators also did so with particular kinds of clean-cut, Heisman-winning quarterbacks, from Spurrier himself back in the 1960s to Danny Wuerffel to Tim Tebow.
