Can DJ Lagway become Florida's next great quarterback?

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- DJ Lagway has a vivid memory of one of his first visits to Florida. He remembers sitting in the quarterbacks meeting room with future first-round pick Anthony Richardson and a few other players, coach Billy Napier and assistant Ryan O'Hara.

Lagway was at the beginning of his high school quarterback career, just starting to dive into the ins and outs of what it takes to play the position. He heard them going over concepts in intricate detail, but he also saw the way the coaches taught, the way the players learned and the relationship they all had with one another.

The more he listened, the more he realized how badly he needed to be in this room himself, believing he could become elite with this type of coaching. "They were just talking and I'm like, 'I don't know what that is, but I've got to learn that,'" Lagway says.

He committed to Florida in 2022, at a time when Napier needed a big recruiting win. Though he was a toddler in Willis, Texas, when Florida had won its last national championship in 2008, Lagway grew up on stories about the Gators. He loved the colors. He loved the swagger the team played with.

His cousins used to play college football video games, and as a way to appease him, they gave him a fake controller so he could feel like he was playing with them. The first cover he remembers had Tim Tebow on it.

Lagway knew full well how much pressure comes with playing quarterback at a school that has produced three Heisman Trophy winners at the position, but he believed in what he heard in that meeting room, and he believed that Napier could help him live up to expectations. He held firm to his commitment, signed in 2023 and wowed when he played as a true freshman last season.

Now, the stage in Gainesville is his. No fake game controllers needed.

FOUR YEARS AGO, very few people outside Texas knew about Lagway. He started his freshman year at Willis High at safety, playing quarterback situationally. Once the season ended, though, he switched full time to quarterback and started working with a private coach. That summer, headed into his sophomore year, he went to a prospect camp at Texas, zero offers in hand.

Arch Manning, the No. 1 quarterback prospect in the class of 2023, was at the same camp. Lagway admits he was a bit in awe. He embraced the opportunity to learn from Texas coach Steve Sarkisian but also measure himself against some of the top quarterback prospects a year ahead of him.

"I did pretty well, actually," Lagway says. "It let me know that I can go out there and compete with anybody. It was just fun to see how my talent stacked up with other players in the state and seeing that I can do it. With a lot of more work and a lot of more time put in, it was going to pay off."

As a sophomore, he relied on his ability as a runner while he learned the mechanics of how to become a great passer. Lagway went to Gainesville for a visit right after that season, the first spring Napier was at Florida in 2022. Napier said he had watched the tape and saw a big, long athletic player he described as "a ball of clay" because he was just getting started at quarterback. It was a no-brainer to offer him a scholarship.

"That meant the world to me," Lagway says.

Napier went to visit Lagway in Texas whenever he could, and the two formed a close bond. Lagway started to rise in the recruiting rankings, becoming the No. 1 dual-threat quarterback in his class. And following his junior season in 2022, Lagway committed to Florida.

He still had one year left to play in high school, and he made the most of it, throwing 58 touchdown passes and rushing for 16 more en route to Gatorade National Player of the Year honors.

But as Lagway reached new heights in 2023, Florida struggled, losing five straight to end the season. Florida recruits started to decommit, and Lagway kept getting phone calls from programs eager to flip his commitment, telling him Napier would not last long with the Gators. If Lagway changed his mind on Florida, Napier may have been on even shakier ground after going 5-7 to close out his second season as coach.

"He was in one of those 'tip the scale' scenarios," Napier said. "We lost probably four or five other commits down the stretch there. We built that class around him, and if he folds his cards, then probably a lot of other kids do, too. But he stuck. He had a vision for what he wanted to do here. He has a little bit of that edge to where he feels like he could be the catalyst. He could be the one."

Lagway says that despite the calls from other schools, he never wavered in his decision to go to Florida.

"I stayed true to my commitment because I'm a man of my word," Lagway said. "I saw day to day how Coach Napier and Coach O'Hara coach, and I knew if I was in their system, I'd be getting developed to get to the NFL."

Napier believes their early interest in him played a big role. So does O'Hara, the quarterbacks coach at Florida.

"He has no fear. That's the part that I always come back to, is: 'Why did you stay committed to us?'" O'Hara said. "He saw the vision. He believed in Napier. He believed in what I could teach him to develop at quarterback. He believed in the system. He believed in the players we were recruiting. He never flinched.

"People were throwing money at him, taking trips to see him. Some heavy hitters, really good quarterback developers. He sees Anthony get drafted, and then the development with (Graham) Mertz, and was like, 'OK, I can go do this. I can make this my place.' He did that last year. Now it's his turn."

THE AUTOGRAPHED FOOTBALL sits at the center of the table inside the quarterbacks room at the Florida football facility. O'Hara picks it up, explaining that his dad gave it to him as a gift when he was officially promoted to the position earlier this spring after serving as an offensive analyst.

O'Hara took one look at the ball, signed by the Heisman winning trio of Danny Wuerffel, Steve Spurrier and Tim Tebow, and decided it would stay in the meeting room, "just for the guys to keep the aura around, like, 'Remember where you're at.'"

Not that Lagway needs any reminders.

The vibes are far different than they were a year ago, when the pressure was on Napier to deliver. The plan was for Lagway to play situationally behind Mertz. But after Mertz sustained a concussion in the season opener against Miami, Lagway had his opportunity to start Week 2 against Samford.

"That whole week was a roller coaster," Lagway said. "I was battling with some shoulder soreness, just trying to figure out what was going on with that. I wasn't even sure I was going to play, not even sure I was going to play the season. But still being able to lock in and prepare and just give it my all, that's what I wanted to do."

Lagway ended up starting and set a Florida true freshman record with 456 yards passing and three touchdowns. That performance was all Florida fans had to see to double down on their belief that Lagway was the next Gators quarterback great. How did he do that with a sore shoulder? "I'm still trying to figure that out," he says with a chuckle. Mertz went down with a season-ending knee injury against Tennessee in mid-October. Lagway entered the game and threw a 27-yard touchdown pass with 29 seconds left to send the game into overtime before Florida ultimately lost.

Three weeks later, Lagway had Florida up 10-3 on Georgia in the second quarter. But he pulled his hamstring and missed the rest of the game, and Florida lost for the seventh time in the last eight games against its rival. The injuries felt like they were piling up on Lagway, but so was the pressure he placed on himself to perform.

"That was very frustrating, because I knew how close I was to achieving something that hasn't been achieved in a long time," Lagway said. "This is where I kind of messed up, too. I was always looking for that big moment to make history. I wanted to be in the history books forever."

There is still time for that, of course, but what Lagway did as a true freshman has set the stage for 2025. Lagway went 6-1 as the starter -- the lone loss to Georgia, a game he did not finish. His performance also helped stabilize a program that had been teetering. Athletic director Scott Stricklin announced last November that Napier would return for Year 4.

"That decision by Scott was not about me," Napier said. "It is more of an investment in the entire group. If we don't have good people, then we probably do splinter. We probably do fall apart. I do think you saw the players take a deep breath and then go play the game the way it should be played down the stretch."

Indeed, Florida finished on a four-game winning streak, including upset wins over LSU and Ole Miss with Lagway leading the charge. It was the first time since 2003 that an unranked Florida team had beaten Top 25 opponents in consecutive games.

IN JANUARY, O'HARA asked Lagway to come up with a list of goals for this season. They turned it into a PowerPoint slide and saved it, so Lagway can look at it as a reminder whenever he wants. They are keeping those goals private for now, but there is no doubting what Lagway wants: a championship.

To that end, he has spent the offseason watching tape whenever possible. "He's obsessed with playing quarterback," O'Hara says.

So obsessed that he texted Napier a screenshot of Kirk Cousins' home screen setup after watching the "Quarterback" series on Netflix and asked for the same thing so he could also watch tape like that at home. He texts O'Hara constantly with questions, videos, notes, voice memos, eager to learn as much as possible.

"The big emphasis this year is looking at defenses," O'Hara said. "We come in here and we might watch 60 clips of one coverage and watch how it unfolds against all these concepts. That's where he'll be better, defensive recognition and tying that in with playing more on time from the pocket, getting the ball out quickly, being clean with his footwork and then shortening up his stroke."

"I want to get better at the boring plays" is something Lagway says to O'Hara all the time. It is obvious how electric he can be with the ball in his hands, but O'Hara said the coaching staff has tried to emphasize to Lagway that checking down and throwing to the running back is sometimes a better option than taking off and running.

Keeping the starting quarterback healthy is obviously a necessary ingredient for any team's success, but Florida has to be particularly mindful with Lagway. He missed spring practice after offseason shoulder surgery, and has been dealing with a calf strain throughout preseason camp. Lagway says the injuries he has faced since his arrival have been frustrating, but he is trying not to dwell on them.

He has asked former Gators quarterbacks for advice. He has listened when Spurrier has walked into the quarterbacks room to go over his own mantras and best practices. Napier says Lagway is also trying to figure out how to handle his stardom on campus.

"He can't go to the softball game without people lining up when he goes to get a drink at the concession stand," Napier says. "He's learning a different lifestyle in that regard. He's navigating the injury bug. He's navigating this superstar spotlight. He's navigating the expectations of this season. For us, we have to help him deal with all the things that come with being the quarterback at a place like this."

He is a celebrity, though, as much as Florida has tried to shield him from all the hype. Over the summer, he filmed a T-Mobile commercial with Patrick Mahomes and Rob Gronkowski. He has other NIL deals with Gatorade, Nintendo, Leaf Trading Cards and Lamborghini Orlando. Lagway has donated part of the money he has received through those deals to support women's athletic programs at Florida and to start his own foundation in partnership with UF Health.

Those deals do not happen without his talent or his star power. The focus, at least to Lagway and the coaching staff, is on all the ways he can be better this season. O'Hara says Lagway's instincts to see the field and make plays are "as pure as I've ever been around at any position."

But instincts only take you so far.

"People think he's just this big, talented dude, but he really wants to improve at every part of playing quarterback," O'Hara says. "That's what makes him so dangerous. He can be as good as he wants to be."

Lagway himself says he wants to make history. There is one certain way to do that when playing quarterback at Florida: ending the recent run of mediocrity and winning a championship.

"I knew what I signed up for coming into this so I'm excited for it," Lagway said. "It's going to be fun."