Florida Gators’ biggest recruiting find of the last decade comes at the hands of Jim McElwain
Finding a star at quarterback isn’t the easiest thing to do when it comes to recruiting, and the Florida Gators found one in odd circumstances.
One of the best quarterbacks of the last twenty years to hit Gainesville came in one of the oddest packages. Kyle Trask threw for 43 touchdowns during the shortened COVID-19 season, and a couple of more games could have vaulted him to 50 and a Heisman Trophy.
How the Gators got Trask is one of the better stories in recruiting, and he was named the best recruiting find outside of the top-500 in the past decade by The Athletic’s Manny Navarro.
Trask never started a game after his freshman year in high school and didn’t start a game at Florida until his fourth season. The Texas native, whose other offers came from Houston Baptist, McNeese State and Lamar, finished his career as a Heisman finalist in 2020 after throwing for 4,283 yards and 43 touchdowns, breaking Danny Wuerffel’s 24-year-old school record. The Bucs selected him in the second round of the 2021 draft.
The Athletic’s Manny Navarro
Kyle Trask was an elite recruiting find
When you look at how recruiting has gone in recent years for the Gators, they haven’t had the most elite classes, but rather had to work harder on development. Trask is the poster child for that, but it doesn’t have anything to do with his ability.
He was a high two-star recruit who got low three-star status at the end of the cycle. Trask famously didn’t start a game since his freshman year of college due to being at the same high school as elite five-star quarterback D’Eriq King. Instead of transferring, Trask stuck it out and played often in the second half of games when King led the team to huge leads.
He sent out tapes to teams so he could get noticed due to his lack of game film, and the Gators offensive coordinator at the time, Doug Nussmeier, took notice and kept tabs on him. They eventually offered him a scholarship, and he waited his turn until 2019, when he started after Felipe Franks’ broken foot.
Trask was a Heisman Trophy finalist in 2020 and was a second-round pick of the world champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 2021 NFL Draft. Pretty good for a guy who never started a varsity game in high school.