All 32 NFL teams made their final cuts to trim their active rosters down to 53 men earlier this week, a sign that football is slowly but surely coming back into our lives.
With rosters being finalized, it also means we can see how many rookies ended up making it to the NFL, and all the usual suspects are well represented.
The Ohio State Buckeyes led the way with 11 rookies from the 2026 Draft class on NFL rosters, followed by Texas A&M, which had 10 former Aggies make it to the league.
Those two make sense, considering they dominate the recruiting rankings year in and year out and both made the College Football Playoff this past season.
Other mainstays like Alabama and Georgia were right behind the Aggies and Buckeyes with nine rookies on NFL rosters, but another team that hasn’t even sniffed the CFP in the last several years was hilariously lumped in with the rest of these upper echelon college programs.
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That’s right, folks! The 4-8 Florida Gators produced a staggering nine players from their 2025 football team that ended up on 53-man rosters in the NFL.
Talk about doing less with more, right?
And yes, there are some qualifiers that need to be thrown out there about these players.
One is a long snapper, and while it’s important to have a good long snapper, it doesn’t exactly move the needle in the win-loss column.
The other is Caleb Banks who, while being a first-round pick, only played in three games for Florida in 2025.
But, when you couple that with the fact that a lot of Florida’s best players weren’t even draft eligible this past April – like All-SEC running back Jadan Baugh, Freshman All-SEC wideout Vernell Brown III, sack leader and Freshman All-SEC edge rusher Jayden Woods, and leading tackler/All-SEC linebacker Myles Graham – you start to see just how disappointing this team was this past season.
And it starts at the top.
Head coach Billy Napier took a team loaded with NFL talent and a five-star quarterback under center in DJ Lagway and led the Gators to the worst possible outcome.
Seriously, if you gave that Gators team an average coach and simulated the season 1,000 times, I don’t think he would do worse than 4-8 unless his entire roster spontaneously combusted.
Florida’s in-state rivals, the Miami Hurricanes, also had nine rookie players make an NFL roster this week, and that team played for a national championship just this past season in addition to embarrassing the Gators the two times they met up on the field in 2024 and 2025.
Asking this team to go out and win a national title might be a bridge too far, but Florida was a darkhorse Playoff contender this time a year ago.
And the Gators didn’t even make a bowl game.
This is why Napier is no longer employed by the University of Florida, but it’s a good reminder of why Gators athletic director Scott Stricklin probably should have pulled the trigger sooner.
While most of its peers with regard to roster talent were out here winning 10 games and making the CFP, Florida won a whopping two SEC games and lost to South Florida in The Swamp.
Think about that for a second.
How many USF Bulls do you see on NFL rosters this week?
I rest my case.
Florida’s impressive NFL presence only highlights how incompetent the Napier regime was, but it’s also a silver lining for Gator fans.
If new head coach Jon Sumrall and his staff are even competent coaches, supporters of the program won’t have to endure rock bottom for too much longer.
Again, is it fair to expect a national championship right away?
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No. But a seven or eight-win season and a nice bowl game would be a great start, which, ironically enough, represented Napier’s ceiling.
Coaching matters, and if you want proof, look no further than the 2025 Florida Gators.
And after you’re done looking, try not to run to your toilet and puke.
