Jon Sumrall invokes Bob Stoops while detailing his vision for Florida football

Jon Sumrall hopes his teams at Florida can have a similar style to that of former Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops. Specifically, he wants to maintain his identity as a “defensive guy” while not allowing it to come at the expense of his product on offense.

Stoops was previously a defensive coordinator for three seasons under Steve Spurrier at Florida from 1996-98. But after that, he took over as the head coach of the Sooners and spent 18 seasons there, winning one national title and 10 conference championships.

Stoops kept his identity as a defensive mind, but also had plenty of success on offense, coaching a pair of Heisman winning quarterbacks in Jason White and Sam Bradford. Sumrall hopes that he can have that same kind of explosive offense in Gainesville.

“On offense, when I think of Florida football, I think of aggressive, I think of explosive, I think about mixing tempos and using it to your advantage and dictating the game to the opponent,” he said. “I think about stretching the field and threatening every blade of grass. It all starts with the quarterback and the pieces around him. We’ll get elite skill players here. We’ve got some already and we need to keep them. Our O-line has to play with a demeanor that’s nasty and that is a force to be reckoned with and that will happen.

“I may be a defensive guy, but I want to be a defensive guy like somebody coach Spurrier knows, like Bob Stoops. I want the scoreboard to light up. The way we’ve played maybe where I’ve been has looked a little different than the way I want to play moving forward because your job wherever you are is to figure out how you win for the place you’re at. Well, here I think we can score a lot of points and that’s what I want to do.”

Notably, Florida had many issues on offense this past season. The Gators ranked last in the SEC in points per game (21.6) while quarterback DJ Lagway led the conference with 14 interceptions.

Sumrall isn’t just focused on improving the offense, however. He also wants to get the defense back to being one of the best in the country.

“Defensively, we will swarm and we will attack,” he said. “We will play with great pursuit of the football and relentless effort. We will always be on the hunt, because that’s what Gators do. We’re gonna make our opponents uncomfortable. I want to be the most feared defense in the country.”

Time will tell what becomes of the Jon Sumrall era at Florida, but he takes over in a time of desperate need. They Gators have failed to make a bowl game in two of the past three years and haven’t won double digit games since 2019.

Sumrall is confident he can be the right guy to fix it, though. And if he does, it will require him to play a little bit of a different style than he has in the past.