Florida Gators offensive coordinator candidates are a fascinating group, and they all have one thing in common
Jon Sumrall knows the Florida Gators need an explosive offense, and the top candidates all have a resume that emphasizes it.
Florida Gators head coach Jon Sumrall understands the one thing you need to have in Gainesville: an explosive offense.
“One of my first priorities will be to assemble an incredible staff, including an offensive coordinator who understands that, at Florida, having an explosive offense isn’t optional – it’s mandatory,” said Sumrall in his opening statement when accepting the job.
The big thing here is: who should the Gators hire? There are some very interesting candidates, and I went to our resident coach expert AJ Schulte to get the lowdown on the top candidates.
Florida Gators offensive coaching candidates
Pitt OC Kade Bell
The son of Gators legend Kerwin Bell, one of the most successful coaches in the Southeast, Kade Bell cut his teeth along the DII and FCS levels before making his way up to the P4 level at Pitt. Taking over play calling duties from his dad at Valdosta State in 2018, Kade orchestrated an offense that broke the DII record for most points scored in a season on their way to winning the DII National Championship that season. After a year at Tusculum, Kade reunited with his dad at Western Carolina in 2021, helping the Catamounts field one of the top offenses at the FCS level.
His stop at Pitt has been a tumultuous one, fielding multiple quarterbacks in both 2024 and 2025 season, but Bell has seemingly found his groove with Mason Heintschel under center. Bell primarily runs an up-tempo, spread offense predicated on creating explosives through the air, featuring a heavy dose of RPOs to try and take advantage of defensive leverages. His results at Pitt might not seem like the most encouraging based on metrics, but perhaps having a talent advantage at Florida would improve it.
Georgia Tech OC Buster Faulkner
For the life of me, I cannot figure out why Faulkner hasn’t gotten more buzz as an OC candidate for a much bigger school. Faulkner produced productive offenses at Southern Miss and Arkansas State before spending time under Todd Monken at Georgia, learning from one of the best at using motion and mixing in play-action, and his results speak for themselves at Georgia Tech. He’s leaned heavily into the QB run game to force defenses to account for that “+1” in the box, and rips through the air to take advantage of that. Despite being known as a “run-first” team, GT under Faulkner is one of the most productive passing offenses in the country, sitting 90th percentile or better in Passing EPA, success rate, yards per pass, and explosiveness.
Getting Faulkner access to the resources Florida can boast could give Jon Sumrall the exact offense he wanted to bring to Florida.
Tennessee OC Joey Halzle
After finishing his career as a backup at Oklahoma, Halzle got started under Josh Heupel with the Sooners, and has followed him everywhere he’s gone, working his way up the ladder. Along the way, he’s guided productive quarterbacks like Drew Lock, Dillon Gabriel, Hendon Hooker, Joe Milton, Nico Iamaleava, and now Joey Aguilar. He’s grown with Heupel in every iteration of his “veer and shoot” style of offense, and it’s hard to ignore his record of production at maximizing every quarterback he’s had and tailoring the offense to fit their style of play. While it might seem like a bit of a risk, as parsing through an offensive head coach’s influence versus the offensive coordinator, Halzle does call plays for the Volunteers. It feels like it might be more of a lateral move to take a stable OC job for another one he’d have to rebuild at, but stepping out from Heupel’s shadow might be a great move for his long-term career prospects. He’d certainly fit Sumrall’s mold of wanting an explosive offensive mind.
Former New York Giants HC Brian Daboll
This one feels like a long shot, given the other jobs Daboll is linked to, but a return to the SEC might be an alluring one for Daboll in a similar arc as Chip Kelly. Daboll’s success in the college and NFL as an offensive mind is well-known, consistently playing to the strengths of his quarterbacks and delivering productive offenses in every stop he’s been at. His development of Josh Allen (paging DJ Lagway, is this thing on?) is the largest feather in his cap, and he’s done a fantastic job calling the offense everywhere he’s been. His flexibility as a play caller from personnel usage to motion and misdirection has been masterful at the NFL level, and he’s obviously already proven his chops in CFB+SEC at Alabama. If he can focus mainly on drawing up plays and let his support staff handle the off-field duties of a coordinator, I think this would be a great fit for Daboll, but he does seem content to wait for an NFL OC gig right now as well.
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