Florida suspends 7 including DE CeCe Jefferson, for season opener.
Florida suspended seven players, including star defensive end CeCe Jefferson and offensive playmaker Kadarius Toney, from its season-opening 53-6 win against Charleston Southern on Saturday.
A school official told ESPN that the suspensions are due to failure to “live up to the Gator standard.”
Jefferson, who led the team in sacks last season with 4.5, is out due to “academic-related issues,” according to a news release.
Defensive lineman Luke Ancrum, defensive tackle Kyree Campbell, cornerback Brian Edwards, running back Adarius Lemons and walk-on athlete James Washington also missed the game.
The seven-player suspension represents the first major discipline from first-year coach Dan Mullen, who came to Florida this offseason after nine seasons as head coach at Mississippi State.
Toney was involved in two incidents this offseason. Police pulled him over for a traffic stop and found a loaded assault rifle in his car in July. In May, he allegedly pulled out an air soft weapon during an on-campus altercation.
Our team was divided in 2021,” Florida offensive lineman Austin Barber told me.
“That team just didn’t play together,” linebacker Derek Wingo lamented.
“I love Dan Mullen, I truly do,” linebacker Scooby Williams remarked. “I’ll always be grateful to him. But things are just much more laid out now.”
“There’s a new standard now,” safety Miguel Mitchell explained. “I wasn’t here in 2021, but everyone who was says that some stuff that won’t fly now was acceptable with the last staff.”
With each player I asked this question to, a process that began at a Gator Collective event back in February, the picture became more and more clearly painted. There was something off with the culture at Florida, and it led to a team that just didn’t mesh well.
Head coach Dan Mullen, who returned to Gainesville after a successful stint as the Florida Gators’ offensive coordinator that included two national championships in 2006 and 2008, inherited his own culture mess.
His predecessor, Jim McElwain, ran off the highly-regarded QB Will Grier after he got popped for PEDs for no reason other than he wanted to prove he could win with his own hand-picked players, oversaw a roster that had several players suspended for taking part in a credit card fraud scheme, lied about receiving death threats to paint the Florida Gators fanbase as psychotic lunatics who demand gore at the first sign of difficulty, and directed a strength and conditioning program that the players deemed to be so weak that they chose to pay out of their pockets for additional strength and conditioning from sources outside the program. His players didn’t even know the Florida Gators fight song.
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