Should the Florida Gators Pursue Georgia OL in Transfer Portal?
Yes.
We could end this story right there, but to remain professional, we'll thoroughly expand on the topic.
The Georgia Bulldogs lost two offensive tackles to the transfer portal on Sunday, both being former consensus five-star recruits in rising sophomore offensive tackle Amarius Mims and rising redshirt junior interior lineman Clay Webb.
Five and a half hours south in Gainesville, the Florida Gators are preparing for an active post-spring period of roster additions and subtractions via transfer as new head coach Billy Napier prepares to rebuild the foundation of UF's roster.
You can expect Napier and his staff to pursue at least one, if not both, of the former Georgia offensive linemen as a part of his rebuilding process. One of Florida's biggest needs, due to lackluster recruiting by the previous UF coaching staff, is along the offensive line, and both Mims and Webb could fill in perfectly.
Mims, 6-foot-7, 330 pounds, was a priority recruiting target for Florida in the class of 2021 out of Bleckley County (Ga.). His final visit before the COVID-19 extended recruiting dead period was to UF in March 2020, which left a strong enough impression on Mims to the point that he included the Gators in his top ten schools the next month.
That list was cut once again in the summer of 2020, though, with the Gators nowhere to be found. Mims ended up committing to Georgia that October, and he enrolled at UGA prior to the Bulldogs' Peach Bowl appearance that season.
As a true freshman, Mims took the field in eight games en route to a national championship victory with the Bulldogs as a reserve left tackle.
Webb, who was considered the No. 1 center in the nation in the class of 2019, never seemed to find his footing in Athens despite being coveted across the country as a recruit. The 6-foot-3, 290-pound lineman appeared in five games during his first two seasons at UGA but did not play in 2021, losing the battle to start at center to Sedrick Van Pran.
In addition to his experience at center, Webb has also trained at left guard and even manned the role against South Carolina in 2020.
A product of Oxford (Ala.) High School, Webb pulled in 12 offers as a recruit including one from Florida, which came his way during a visit to campus in June 2017. He was originally recruited by Jim McElwain's coaching staff at UF, and Dan Mullen's staff was unable to pick things up where they were left off with Webb following McElwain's dismissal later that year.
When you look at Florida's current offensive line, there are things to be encouraged by paired with reasons to worry. The unit returns three starters from a year ago in left tackle Richard Gouraige, left guard Ethan White and center Kingsley Eguakun, but the right side of the line is in need of two new starters.
O'Cyrus Torrence, who played for Napier at Louisiana, was brought in as a transfer to compete for one of those spots. In-house linemen Josh Braun and Michael Tarquin will fight to start as well. But, otherwise, the offensive line cupboard is a bit bare in terms of depth, per Napier, as well as talent, as seen by Mullen and his staff's struggles with recruiting.
"I think the offensive line is a reflection of the entire team. I mean, we have a pretty good first group we can put out there, and if you really evaluated the team relative to experience, this is a very inexperienced team," Napier said in March.
"After the first team if you look at the experience, the number of plays that a lot of these guys have played, they haven't played any. So we have a lot of work to do to develop that second and third group."
While Mims and Webb don't offer much playing experience, they do provide quite a bit of untapped potential that simply wasn't showcased at Georgia, a program that has consistently recruited offensive linemen as well as any school in recent memory.
With a new coaching staff in place and a need for starting-caliber linemen as well as depth up front, Mims and Webb could be inclined to give the Gators another chance via transfer portal recruitment. However, there could be some roadblocks for UF to jump over should Mims and/or Webb make their way to Gainesville.
The SEC passed a rule in 2021 to grant intraconference transfers immediate eligibility at their new school, but there is a catch: Fall sports athletes must declare their intention to transfer by February 1 in order to maintain immediate eligibility for the upcoming season, should they remain in the conference.
Mims and Webb's reported entrance into the transfer portal came on April 10.
In a vacuum, neither player could take the field for the Gators during the 2022 season in accordance with the rule. But, it's hard to look at things in a vacuum when it comes to college football.
Both Mims and Webb could apply for a waiver in order to bypass the rule and earn immediate eligibility with an SEC program in 2022. Of course, the waiver would require sound reasoning as to why they deserve immediate eligibility — we won't pretend to know the full extent as to why either player is leaving Georgia, but there is one factor that could play a part in each player having a waiver granted.
Not long after the deadline passed earlier this year, Georgia's offensive line coach Matt Luke stepped away from the program in February. Luke served as Mims' primary recruiter to Georgia after joining the staff in 2020, when Mims was a rising senior in high school and still in the midst of his recruiting process.
When it comes to high school recruiting, it is common to see a prospect re-evaluate their options upon their potential position coach leaving a school in contention for their services. Whether or not the SEC would apply the same logic to transfers and granting waivers is unknown, however, it is a reasonable factor to include in a waiver application.
If immediate playing time is the primary reason Mims and Webb are looking for new homes, Florida, as well as other SEC programs, could face an uphill battle in prying the linemen from Georgia. But that shouldn't stop the Gators from trying to land either player, especially if Napier and Co. believe obtaining waivers is possible.
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