The Florida football team is experiencing unfamiliar continuity under center in returning starting quarterback Feleipe Franks. The same cannot be said for the offensive line, the unit charged with protecting the focal point of the Gators offense.
The five-man unit consisting of redshirt senior Nick Buchanan, redshirt juniors Stone Forsythe, Brett Heggie and Jean Delance and redshirt freshman Christopher Bleich has been one of the biggest talking points surrounding the team this offseason. Buchanan is the only returning starter to a line that lost four starters, most notably Jawaan Taylor, a second round pick in the 2019 NFL Draft.
“There’s a lot of new, young guys out there,” said John Hevesy, co-offensive coordinator and offensive line coach. “We can’t shoot ourselves in the foot.”
Despite the offensive line’s inexperience, Hevesy sees depth in the unit.
“There’s six, seven, eight I think could go in there and play that I feel comfortable with,” he said.
Hevesy said that he now knows the offensive linemen better in terms of their in-game abilities since joining the coaching staff in 2018. He added that the unit improved on minimizing penalties during camp and in scrimmages, but noted the difference between friendly practices in the indoor practice facility and a true hostile environment.
The offensive line will be tested in Orlando for a neutral site game against the Miami Hurricanes at Camping World Stadium Saturday night.
Miami had one of the top defensive line units in all of Division I last season. UM returns two starters from 2018 (junior defensive end Jonathan Garvin and senior defensive tackle Pat Bethel) to a front line that accumulated 40 sacks a season ago, the ninth-most in the nation.
Hevesy praised the athleticism of the Hurricanes’ defensive line, but said he feels good about his unit, jokingly adding that he had no choice.
“They’re very fundamentally sound,” Hevesy said. “They play hard, they attack the ball, they attack everything they do. So, it’s just a matter of, for us, again, executing our offense.”
Heggie, who appeared in nine games last season and played both guard positions, said that the unit’s biggest improvements have been its consistency and communication.
“If you have those two things, you can really play well together up front,” he said.
Heggie added that the offensive line is about three quarters of the way through its game plan for Miami.
“I’d say we’re ready to go, we just come out here every day and we try to put it all together,” Heggie said.”And we’re going to make mistakes but we go in and try to fix them everyday with film.”
Any mistakes the unit makes will be magnified on the national scale in the first clash between the Hurricanes and Gators since 2013.
“We’re the younger group out of all of them, so we’ve got to hold our own and do our job,” Hevesy said. “We’ve got great skill players at the quarterback, at the running back, at the receivers, tight end, all those guys.
“So we’ve just got to give them an opportunity to make a play.”
Follow Kyle Wood on Twitter @Kkylewood. Contact him at kwood@alligator.org.
Redshirt senior center Nick Buchanan is the only returning starter on Florida’s offensive line.
