Illini LB commit Trevor Moffitt Growing Out of Dad’s Football Shadow
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- When he started middle school, Trevor Moffitt came home from football practice with some distressing news for his mother.
Due to being so small in stature and having instantly high expectations because of his dad’s past success, Moffitt wasn’t enjoying the sport he grew up loving.
“He came home one day and said ‘mom, I just don’t think football is for me’ and I was so heartbroken because I knew how much he loved it since he was about two years old,” Shauna Jordan, Trevor Moffitt’s mother, said in an interview with Illini Now/Sports Illustrated.
Since he strapped on a set of shoulder pads, Trevor Moffitt has always gone by the moniker of “Ben’s boy” that he initially loved but grew to resent because it hid his ability to step out of his dad’s massive shadow in the small town of Bushnell, Florida.
Ben Moffitt (left) was a semifinalist for the 2007 Butkus Award and a All-Big East Conference selection at South Florida. Trevor Moffitt (right) was an All-Area Defensive Player of the Year selection (the same honor earned by his dad 17 years earlier) following a 2019 season that produced 110 tackles, 22 tackles for loss, 11 sacks and four forced fumbles.
Moffitt’s father, Ben, was a three-year starter at linebacker for South Florida and was an All-Big East Conference selection in 2007. Ben Moffitt, who was a semifinalist for the 2007 Butkus Award (given to the nation’s best linebacker), totaled 279 tackles as a three-year starter at middle linebacker for a USF program that had back-to-back nine-win seasons in 2006 and 2007.
“For a long time, I spent a lot of time hearing stuff like ‘oh that’s Ben’s boy there’ or ‘that’s a Moffitt kid there’ and it took until about my sophomore year when people would say ‘there’s Trevor Moffitt making another tackle’,” Trevor Moffitt said. “Don’t get me wrong, I respect and love my dad. He was a great player. But I’m Trevor Moffitt and like anybody else, I wanted to make a name for myself.”
In just a few years since coming home dejected as a seventh grader, Moffitt managed to become one of the most accomplished linebackers in his region. Last season Trevor Moffitt was an All-Area Defensive Player of the Year selection (the same honor earned by his dad 17 years earlier) following a 2019 season that produced 110 tackles, 22 tackles for loss, 11 sacks and four forced fumbles that led South Sumter High School to a 9-4 overall record and a berth in the Class 4A-Region 2 championship game.
“It was really this past season where I started to get people to understand not only can I be as good as him but that we’re different players,” Trevor Moffitt said about the comparisons to my dad. “Now I’m at a place where people understand I’m my own person. That’s exactly how I was raised to be and how I want to be known.”
For a lot of reasons, the comparison to his father doesn’t make a lot of sense. Ben Moffitt was between 245-50 pounds during his playing days at USF and a few year prior while at South Sumter High School, he broke the state record for weightlifting in the 238-pound weight class by executing in the clean-and-jerk a lift of 330 pounds.
Trevor’s game at the same position of his father isn’t necessarily about power but revolves around elite level speed.
“Out of the gates, Trevor had a smaller frame and he’s just never been built like his dad even nowadays,” Shauna Jordan said. “But he’s always, and I mean always, been fast. Always.”
Trevor Moffitt’s speed is what has led him to accomplish something his father never did - commit and eventually sign with a Power Five Conference school.
Moffitt’s speed, which has already been laser-timed as 4.4 seconds in the 40-yard dash, is what immediately impressed the Illinois coaching staff, especially Illini head coach Lovie Smith. Smith, who had been a NFL defensive coordinator and head coach for two decades before agreeing to be the Illini head coach in 2016, was impressed with all of Trevor Moffitt’s speed and athleticism numbers provided by his high school and individual private camps. The former Chicago Bears and Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach has also publicly stated his affection for players who have successful genetics in their family. Smith had just one reservation about Trevor Moffitt and it was the same one as his mom when he started to play - his size.
“On a coaching scouting report that got passed around, I was listed at 5-foot-11 and 170 pounds,” Trevor Moffitt said to IlliniNow/SI. “I don’t know why or if it just never got updated or what. The Illinois coaches even asked me three months into their offer if I thought I could get bigger and I asked them what they meant. They offered me thinking I was that, 5-11 and 170. I told them, ‘Coach I’m 6-foot-2 and 195 pounds right now’.”
Suddenly it was signed, sealed and delivered for Trevor Moffitt to join a college football program that has seen seven different linebackers receive first-team All-American honors (Charles Boerio in 1951, Dick Butkus in 1963-64, Derrick Brownlow in 1990, Dana Howard in 1993-94, Simeon Rice in 1994-95, Kevin Hardy in 1995 and J Leman in 2007).
And then we get to the confidence of the Moffitt children, which Shauna Jordan says also applies to Trevor’s younger sister Rylan. Being offered and eventually signing with Illinois wasn’t and isn’t good enough for Trevor Moffitt.
"In the most humble way I can say this - I think I’m one of the most athletic kids in the country and I mean that. I think the sky's the limit for me,” Trevor Moffitt said. “I think I can be an All-American.”
It’s the confidence that led him to verbally commit to Illinois this spring sight unseen due to the coronavirus pandemic shutting down all official visits when both his mother and father didn’t think it was the best idea.
“His father and I were both very against it and just because we’re not together anymore, I need to say this that we’ve always been able to easily come together on a consensus on raising our kids,” Shauna Jordan said. “It’s strange though. I’m good with this decision because I haven’t been stressed by one day since. I needed to tell them that as a single mom this young man is my sun, moon and stars. I’ve had two personal conversations with Lovie Smith and I came away both times thinking ‘I really trust my child with him’. He told me ‘I’m going to have my hands on Trevor and I’ll be guiding him through all this’ and you just don’t know how much ease that puts on me.”
Illinois fans certainly know what an All-American linebacker looks like as last fall they unveiled the Butkus statue outside the Smith Family Football Complex on the U of I campus. From 1990 to 1995, Illinois produced nine All-America selections at linebacker among five players (Brownlow, Howard, John Holecek, Rice and Hardy). Four of those five players (Howard, Rice, Hardy and Holecek) played at the same time under then-head coach Lou Tepper’s 3-4 defensive scheme.
So, Trevor Moffitt will certainly be coming into Champaign as an instantly loud freshman with the expectations not normally associated with an overlooked three-star signee.
“Lovie Smith likened me to (NFL Hall of Fame selection) Derrick Brooks and said to me that ‘Trevor, with your talent, if I don’t get you a shot in the NFL then well, something is just not right,” Moffitt said.
And those self-created expectations is exactly how Trevor Moffitt would like it.
“He's always been that way. Both of my kids are to be honest,” Jordan said. “Maybe it is spiritual or it is something else. I don’t know. What I do know is Trevor is a leader where teachers and kids all flock to him. I’ll tell you this. He’s on FaceTime and chatting every single day with all of those Florida boys (Illinois) is recruiting. They are all convinced they’re going to do big things.”