Florida Football and Jaden Rashada are destined to be linked together until the end of time. The one time Gator commit is now suing Billy Napier, among others, over a failed NIL deal that led to Rashada transferring to Arizona State.
For all the headache that has emerged from this saga, the grand irony is that given the way things have played out for both Rashada and the Gators, all of this chaos is over a quarterback who probably wouldn’t have gotten meaningful snaps in Gainesville anyway.
Florida Football: Was It Worth It?
Rashada flipped to Florida on November 10, 2022. The pending lawsuit argues that Florida had an NIL deal worth over $13 million and was used as a bargaining chip to get Rashada to flip.
But if we take away the money aspect from this mess and pretend that Rashada winds up on campus as planned, DJ Lagway committed to Florida on December 7, 2022 and Graham Mertz committed to transfer to Florida on December 21, 2022, the same day Rashada signed his letter of intent to come to Florida.
If Rashada winds up on campus, the odds of him beating out Mertz for the starting job would have been low to none. If we had to speculate, Napier probably told Rashada the plan was to bring in a transfer QB for 2023 and the starting job would be open for 2024.
But this is college football, and as Triple H once said, that was plan A. Mertz playing well and coming back for the 2024 season is plan B. There’s always a plan B.
We find it hard to imagine that Napier would have shoved Mertz out the door in favor of Rashada for 2024, leaving the starting job up for grabs in 2025.
It’s at this point that we would have had a QB competition on our hands as Lagway and Rashada would have battled it out. The winner would be the starter and the loser probably would have hit the portal.
Rashada is in Athens right now because he lost out to Sam Leavitt in Tempe. Rashada was dealing with a thumb injury during spring practice, but the belief out of Arizona State is that Leavitt had the inside track anyway heading into the summer.
If Rashada wasn’t willing to battle it out with Leavitt for a starting job, are we supposed to assume he would have battled it out with Lagway and come out on top?
Thus, all the headlines, court cases, and other headaches emerging from this soap opera are all for a player who maybe would have started against FSU in 2023, would have had to battle to be backup in 2024, and probably transfers if he didn’t win the starting job in 2025.
Welcome to the modern world of college football.
