GAINESVILLE - Florida’s quarterback job belongs to Aaron Philo, and Buster Faulkner isn’t asking for perfection from the first-time starter. He’s asking for nerve.
The Gators’ offensive coordinator said Tuesday that Philo won out over Tramell Jones Jr. because he stayed steady through a competition that stretched across the offseason. The message to both quarterbacks is simple: don’t shrink when the ball is in your hands.
“It is a young room, with that comes growing pains,” Faulkner said Tuesday. “But the one thing that we don’t want any of those guys doing is playing timid. We want them to rip it, trust what they see, get out there, go play the game, understand (they have) guys around them to go make plays.”
Philo, 21, brings familiarity with Faulkner’s system after two seasons backing him up at Georgia Tech. But Jones, 19, pushed the race deeper than it may have looked early on. Faulkner said the backup got comfortable in the offense fast enough that the edge Philo once had never turned into a runaway decision.
“Early on, if you had made the decision after the first week of spring, yeah, that would have been it,” he said. “But it didn’t come down to that.”
Now Philo gets the first start of his college career Saturday night when Florida opens against Florida Atlantic in the Swamp. He’ll do it with plenty of help around him, starting with preseason All-SEC running back Jadan Baugh and a deep backfield behind him.
Florida’s receivers, led by Vernell Brown III, Eric Singleton and Dallas Wilson, carry the look of a group that could be one of the nation’s best. Up front, the line has three new starters, but Faulkner said it has settled into a dependable unit.
Faulkner was brought in to change the feel of Florida’s offense, and he arrived with the kind of track record Jon Sumrall wanted. The head coach signed him to a three-year, $6.5 million deal to help restore the kind of explosive attack that once defined the program under Steve Spurrier, then again with Tim Tebow and Percy Harvin under Urban Meyer.
That standard has been hard to reach in recent years. Florida’s offense was an SEC-low 21.6 points per game in 2025, and it ranked 11th in 2024 and ninth in 2023 and 2022, when the league still had 14 teams before Texas and Oklahoma arrived. Since 2009, the Gators have posted double-digit wins only four times.
Faulkner’s background suggests why Sumrall wanted him in charge. Georgia Tech averaged 33.1 points last season and 31.1 in 2023, after the Yellow Jackets had managed just 17.1 points per game in 2022.
Still, Week 1 is not a guarantee of fireworks. Faulkner said the opener will reveal a lot about where the offense stands, and he knows Florida fans will be watching for more than just a win.
“I have high expectations, too,” he said.
The challenge is that this is not a finished product. Florida’s first team includes five returners from 2025 and six transfers, plus more players in important reserve roles. Everyone has had to absorb a scheme loaded with pre-snap movement and shifting parts.
“We haven’t played a lot of ball together,” he said. “We’re still a work in progress. They take hard coaching, they want to be coached, so we’re pushing them through all the things that it takes to get the program where you want it to be.”
The players sound eager for what comes next. Brown called the offense “a crazy offense” and said he can’t wait to see it on Saturdays. Baugh said Faulkner keeps finding new ideas.
“He’s very creative,” Baugh said. “We sit at meetings all the time, and I sit right beside him. You see him drawing up something new every day, and nine times out of 10, we’ll put it in.”
Faulkner, though, keeps stressing that the system won’t look exactly the same everywhere. He said Florida’s version has been adjusted to fit Baugh’s 6-foot, 222-pound frame and a receiver group Georgia Tech didn’t have. Sumrall likes that flexibility.
“He’s done that I’d hoped he would,” Sumrall said. “He constantly is an evolver. He’s looking at what fits our people and how to maybe tailor the system to the player.”
FAU at Florida is set for Saturday night at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville.
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