Jon Sumrall, Gators Open Fall Camp Looking to Erase 4-8 Memory
When first-year Florida football coach Jon Sumrall challenged his team, coming off a 4-8 season, to grow stronger, they responded. During director of football performance Rusty Whitt’s offseason program, the Gators improved their four main lifts (power clean, bench, squat and deadlift) by nearly 14,000 pounds collectively while gaining speed with 56 players running over 20 mph.
“The growth has been real,” Sumrall said Tuesday.
While each player proved themselves in the weight room, they’ll need to rise to the occasion again Wednesday morning, when the Gators lace up their cleats and put on the pads for the first day of fall camp.
Wide receiver Dallas Wilson believes he and his teammates will meet the expectation as the biggest improvement in the offseason wasn’t how many pounds they could lift but how they grew together.
“We’re going [in as] a real bonded team this year,” Wilson said. “This game can’t be played by yourself, so just depending on the guy next to me and knowing he’s doing the right thing and I’m doing the right thing, that’ll take us wherever we want to go.”
Whitt’s workouts didn’t just center around building strength, but camaraderie as well. To earn the Gators logo on their practice gear, the team had to pass “The Gauntlet” during the spring, where if one player failed, the entire team failed. Whitt’s prioritization of accountability and teamwork allowed leaders to emerge.
“We just induced a lot of stress on them, and they grew from it, and they grew together,” Whitt said. When you start seeing [Vernell Brown III] say, ‘Hey coach, give me a stopwatch, I’m going to run it,’ or Myles Graham says, ‘Hey, I’m going to take the watch, coach. I got this.’ I’m like, ‘All right, we’ve come somewhere now.’”
Sumrall enters his first camp with a history of finding success in his first year. When he took over at Troy in 2022, he led the team to a 12-2 record after they went 7-5 in 2021. At Tulane, he found similar success, posting a 9-5 record in 2024 to guide the team to their third straight American Athletic Conference Championship Game and a Gasparilla Bowl appearance against Florida.
To repeat the pattern with Florida, he wants to see his players become more reliable in the month leading up to the season opener against FAU on Sept. 5.
“There were flashes of times in the spring where I was like, ‘Oh this team could be really good,’ but the consistency wasn’t always there,” Sumrall said. “We have to get into a space where we bring it every day. Our guys got to get in a routine of like, ‘Man, every time we go out to practice, it’s a great practice because we’re showing up.’”
Florida’s coaching staff looks completely different after Sumrall hired 12 new assistant coaches, but the roster remained mostly constant, retaining 60 players while bringing in 34 transfers and 24 freshmen.
However, question marks surrounding the quarterback battle between Georgia Tech transfer Aaron Philo and redshirt freshman Tramell Jones Jr., as well as the inexperienced offensive line, persist, leaving uncertainty about the team’s potential.
The Gators enter the 2026 season unranked on the Preseason AFCA Coaches Poll, sitting on the outside at No. 27, and last year’s 4-8 record left the new squad working to return the program to its standard.
“It definitely is embarrassing, especially with the logo that we play for, that’s not the standard here,” EDGE Jayden Woods said. “It’s a big chip on our shoulder going into the season.”
Sumrall expects his team to continue building on their growth to prepare for the rigor of the SEC. As he counts down the days until his coaching debut in the Swamp, he has already set the tone for the program.
“We have a lot of growth that’s needed, but we’re going to bring it every day to get better,” Sumrall said.
Category: Feature Sports News, Gator Sports, Gators Football
