Florida is about to line up against a quarterback it once thought it had secured, and the timing makes the whole thing even sharper. Missouri starter Austin Simmons will be on the other sideline Saturday, with the Gators trying to avoid the kind of result that would hand him a 5-0 start.
Simmons has settled in well enough with the Tigers in 2026. He is completing 65% of his passes and has thrown 11 touchdowns without an interception. For Florida, though, the bigger storyline is the long, strange recruiting path that first tied him to Gainesville.
Back in April of 2023, Simmons committed to Florida as a class of 2025 prospect. At that point, the idea was simple enough: DJ Lagway would arrive for 2024, and Simmons would follow in 2025. When Simmons first emerged on Florida’s radar in March of 2023, this was the evaluation that was attached to him:
“He can make all throws you want to see in a highlight package. His deep shots hit his receivers in stride as do his slant route throws. He also can hit the out route, something a certain former Florida football QB struggled with.
Simmons doesn’t have much wasted motion when he throws and when scanning the field he will flip his hips quickly when opting to throw to the other side of the field. The handful of times he does get pressure he stays poised and will climb the pocket as needed.”
Then came the twist. In June, there were rumblings that Simmons would reclassify from 2025 to 2023. After some confusion, that is exactly what happened - and he also flipped to Ole Miss at the same time.
When he made that move, his father said: “But the schedule is too tough, and they want DJ Lagway.”
Simmons spent 2023 through 2025 in Oxford. He opened last season as the Rebels’ starting quarterback, but an ankle injury in Week 2 changed that, and Trinidad Chambliss took over his job. Lane Kiffin left for LSU in the offseason, Simmons stayed put, and Missouri became his next stop.
There’s also a layer of what-ifs hanging over all of this. The argument from the Simmons camp was that Lagway stood in the way at Florida, but if Simmons had actually landed in Gainesville in 2023, he may have played anyway. Graham Mertz got hurt that season, and instead of Max Brown stepping in, Simmons might have been the one getting that chance.
And if he had arrived in 2023, there’s another question Florida can’t answer now: would he have had the inside track to become the backup in 2024 and then the starter by the end of that year?
That part is impossible to know.
What is certain is that Florida now has to deal with a quarterback who could have been wearing orange and blue in another version of this story.
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