Pete Thamel: DJ Lagway has been ‘pedestrian’ at Florida

A lot has gone wrong through the first portion of this season for Florida. Much of that falls on Billy Napier as the head coach, but ESPN’s Pete Thamel thinks some of it is also on the play of QB DJ Lagway.

On the ‘College GameDay Podcast’ on Monday, Rece Davis asked Thamel if the Gators could have a similar turnaround this season at 1-3 as they did last season in 2023. His answer was a pessimistic one considering the average play so far of Lagway.

“Boy, that offense has been so listless, it’s hard to imagine it, you know, all of a sudden getting resuscitated,” said Thamel.

“And, DJ Lagway has been pedestrian. There’s no other way to say it – five picks (against LSU), and they didn’t move the ball much against a very good Miami defense now by the way. But they just, they just couldn’t anything going. But, if you have a quarterback of his caliber, you’re expected to move the ball.”

There was obviously a lot of preseason hype around Lagway as the Gators’ full-time starter for this year. That’s with his former ranking as the top quarterback in his recruiting class and his play to end last season after taking over as their starter for the final seven games out of eight total starts for him as a true freshman. It also led to the overall hype for what this team could be this fall down in The Swamp.

Instead, he and the team have all struggled in their program’s worst start in nearly four decades. Focusing on him, Lagway is 82-123 (67.5%) for 690 yards, five touchdowns, and six interceptions. That’s highlighted by the past two weeks with him throwing five picks in total in their loss in Baton Rouge before this past weekend in Coral Gables where Lagway was 12-23 (52.2%) for just 61 yards in their loss to The ‘U.

It’s now of note too that Lagway, who missed much of this offseason dealing with injuries, is again managing a health matter. He’s reportedly back in a walking boot after some foot soreness came out of their loss to the Hurricanes.

Florida has their first bye to try and get things right before returning to field and really starting conference play in October. That said, not much else matters in Gainesville if Lagway doesn’t play better, let alone the fact that he’s currently injured again.