Florida — our nation’s QB capital
From G.O.A.T. Tom Brady to Dolphins’ Tua to UM’s D’Eriq King, Sunshine State has it all
In an attempt to get the snowbirds to flock southward and boost our budding tourism industry, the Florida Legislature adopted the official nickname “Sunshine State” in
1970, which may or may not have been Tom Brady’s rookie season.
Well, here we are a half-century later and it is time to change our state’s moniker to something more appropriate, more important and more timely.
Yes, we are still world-renowned for our sunshine and our coastline; and for having more artesian springs and spring-fed rivers than anywhere on the globe; and for our 30,000 lakes and our globally acclaimed “River of Grass” — better known as the Florida Everglades.
But everybody knows it’s football that really gets the orange juice running through our veins in this perennially proficient pigskin peninsula. This is why I’m suggesting that the Florida Legislature hold an emergency session before the start of football season and change our name from the Sunshine State to the Commonwealth of Quarterbacks.
Think about it, has there ever been a more interesting, intriguing, eclectic, electric collection of signal-callers in one state as we have right here and right now within our borders? Doesn’t matter which way you travel on our highways and byways — from Pahokee to Pensacola or from Longboat Key to Jupiter Island — you’ll pass more great quarterbacks than shell shops or Indian River fruit stands.
So jump into our candy-apple red Corvette convertible and take a ride with us. As we head into one of the most anticipated football seasons in recent memory, we are going to visit the five most intriguing quarterbacks in the state:
We have Tom Brady, the G.O.A.T. (Greatest Of All Time), attempting to win a second consecutive Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Bucs.
Up in Jacksonville, the Jaguars have No. 1 overall draft pick Trevor Lawrence, whom some believe has the otherworldly ability to become Brady’s potential G.O.A.T heir apparent.
Or how about former UCF star McKenzie Milton trying to complete one of the greatest comeback stories in college football history as the new quarterback of the Florida State Seminoles?
Or current UCF star Dillon Gabriel, the leading passer in the nation a year ago, returning for his junior season to run new coach Gus Malzahn’s legendary, up-tempo, no-huddle offense?
Or Emory Jones finally getting his chance as the starting quarterback of the Florida Gators, but with the unenviable Trask, er, task of replacing the record-breaking Kyle Trask, who is now backing up Brady in Tampa Bay?
Those are our five favorite quarterbacking storylines we will delve into in this column, but we would be remiss if we didn’t at least mention the QB narratives down in South Florida as well.
After all, the Miami Dolphins have been looking for their next great quarterback ever since Dan Marino retired two decades ago and there are hopes and dreams that the search may finally be coming to an end as Tua Tagovailoa enters his second season.
And then there’s D’Eriq King trying to return from a torn ACL for one final college season and one last chance at restoring the long, lost glory of the Miami Hurricanes.
“With all the college guys and NFL guys, you can be a really, really good quarterback and not even crack to the top 5 in this state,” Milton says. “It just speaks to what Florida is; it’s a football state from high school to college to the NFL.”
Tom Brady, Tampa Bay Bucs
Let’s begin our journey through the Commonwealth of Quarterbacks five centuries ago when Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon sailed to La Florida in search of the mythical fountain of youth. As it turned out, Native Americans attacked his expedition and he was wounded and eventually died without ever finding the fabled fountain.
Who knew that 500 years later, it would be another explorer who actually landed in Florida and discovered the Fountain of Youth. His name: Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr., who at 44 is an old man in football years but has never looked younger.
Brady sailed away on a renovated pirate ship from the bitter cold of New England, docked in Tampa Bay and rejuvenated himself in the gentle breezes and soothing waters of the Gulf Coast. Not only did he lead the bedraggled Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a Super Bowl championship in his first season, but he also became the oldest player at any position to ever win a Vince Lombardi Trophy.
“This trophy,” Bucs coach Bruce Arians said during the postgame celebration after the Bucs beat the Kansas City Chiefs, “is because of the belief Tom gave everybody in this organization that this could be done. It only took one man.”
That one man has cemented his legacy as not only the greatest G.O.A.T. in NFL history but the greatest G.O.A.T. in the modern era of American team sports. Brady now has seven championships to Michael Jordan’s six and the fact that he took the behind-the-eight-ball Bucs to a championship while playing with a torn MCL all of last season solidified his spot as the goatiest G.O.A.T. of all time.
You know what’s scary? Last year was
just a trial run. Brady came to the Bucs in the middle of a raging pandemic and had to get accustomed to a new team plus a new coach and learn a new offense for the first time in 20 years. And he had to do it with no minicamps, no preseason games and just a limited training camp.
“I feel like next year is going to be a lot better than this year,” Brady said after being named the Super Bowl MVP. “This team is world champs forever. You can’t take it away from us, but we’re coming back for another one.”
Would anybody really be surprised if it happened again?
After all, Ponce de LeBrady will be another year younger this season.
Trevor Lawrence, Jacksonville Jaguars
Amazingly, what Brady did for Tampa Bay, Trevor Lawrence is expected to do in Jacksonville. Maybe not in his first year, but sooner rather than later, the Clemson Kid is expected to lead the perennially pathetic franchise from Jags to riches.
Before the Jaguars made him the No. 1 overall pick, Jags owner Shad Khan told Sports Illustrated that the drafting of Lawrence “is a decision that is going to define us, certainly for the rest of my life.”
If anybody can take the worst team in the NFL last season at 1-15 and turn them into instant winners, it is Lawrence and new coach Urban Meyer — the living legend college coach renowned for winning and winning immediately during every one of his coaching stops (see the University of Florida, where Meyer won the national championship in his second season as head coach).
Meyer is no dummy. He came out of retirement and made the jump to the NFL
because he knew the Jaguars had the opportunity to draft Lawrence, one of the most dynastic, dynamic quarterbacking prospects to come out in years.
“People who know me know I’m not going to jump into a situation where I don’t believe we can win,” Meyer said when he took the Jags job. “I don’t do that. … This place is primed to win.”
Lawrence has never known anything but winning. He never lost a regular-season game in high school or college. He went 52-2 as a starter at Cartersville High School in Georgia and threw for a state-record 13,902 yards and 162 touchdowns. In three years at Clemson, he went 34-2 as a starter and led the Tigers to a national championship-winning victory over Alabama as a freshman.
“I couldn’t be more excited about coming to Jacksonville,” Lawrence says. “I’m going to do everything in my power to get us back where we want to be. All my focus and all my attention is making us the best that we can be. The best is yet to come.”
Emory Jones, Florida Gators
Lawrence has the pressure of an entire organization on his back; Brady is enveloped by the pressure of his living legacy. But Emory Jones will be suffocated by the pressure of the most rabid fan base in the state.
Even back in the 1960s — long before the Florida Gators had ever accomplished anything of note — the late, great sportswriter Dan Jenkins once said of Gator fans, “They have the tradition of Wake Forest and the arrogance of Notre Dame.”
UF loyalists demand excellence, and Jones is determined to give it to them. Much like Trask, his patient predecessor, he has uncomplainingly waited his turn when hundreds of others across the country
entered the transfer portal.
“I just see how much Kyle grew over the years,” Jones says. “That’s how I see myself; still growing and getting better.”
Is it so far-fetched to think Jones could be even better than Trask in Dan Mullen’s offense, which has turned dual-threat quarterbacks such as Alex Smith, Tim Tebow and Dak Prescott into college stars and NFL prospects?
“Emory is a completely different player than he was when he walked in here,” Mullen says. “He has shown maturity from early on. It wasn’t, ‘I have to play from Day 1.’ It was, ‘I have to continue to be developed from Day 1 to prepare for my moment and my time.’ “
That time is quickly approaching, and Gator Nation is eagerly and arrogantly counting down the days.
Dillon Gabriel, UCF and McKenzie Milton, FSU
We saved the best story for last — a gripping, emotion-dripping story of Dillon Gabriel and McKenzie Milton, a story that spans a continent and an ocean and involves two quarterbacks and two Hawaiian homeboys who treat each other like ohana.
Isn’t it ironic that Gabriel came to UCF because it’s where Milton became a star, and then Milton left UCF because it’s where Gabriel became a star?
Gabriel was Milton’s high school teammate at Mililani High School in Honolulu and took over as the starter when Milton graduated and signed with UCF. In fact, the only reason Gabriel is at UCF is that Milton convinced him that he would thrive in former UCF coach Josh Heupel’s offense. Gabriel turned down more prestigious offers from programs such as USC and Georgia to follow in Milton’s massive UCFootsteps.
When Gabriel signed with the Knights, nobody had an inkling that Milton would miraculously work his way back from the gruesome knee injury he suffered just two months earlier. Milton was in a wheelchair when Gabriel signed with UCF and the consensus medical opinion was that Milton’s football career was likely over.
But for more than two years, Milton strained and struggled through the drudgery of painful rehab, prayed to God for guidance and willpower and somehow, someway came back from the horrific injury. But by that time, Gabriel had become one of the most prolific quarterbacks in all of college football and led the nation in passing last year. That’s when Milton — because he loves UCF so much and knows how much UCF fans love him — decided to transfer to Florida State. The last thing the beloved “KZ” wanted to do was divide the UCF fan base and create a quarterback controversy with his best friend.
“There’s no reason, whether it’s a fivestar recruit coming in or me coming off an injury, that D.G. [Dillon Gabriel] should have to be put in the position to compete [for the starting quarterback job],” Milton said on the day he announced he was entering the transfer portal. “He’s earned the right to be our QB. I wouldn’t want to slow down his momentum. The way he’s been playing, he could very well be a top draft pick next year.”
And so Gabriel comes into his junior season as a Heisman Trophy candidate and the choreographer of new coach Gus Malzahn’s famous no-huddle, up-tempo offense. Gabriel has pinpoint accuracy, he’s mobile, and nobody in college football throws a better deep ball.
“I feel better, stronger and more confident and comfortable than I’ve ever felt,” Gabriel says. “Our goal this season is to win every game and go undefeated.”
What a great story that would be, but the best story of all hopefully will happen in Tallahassee on the first weekend of the season. Gabriel says he can’t wait to see
Milton perhaps trot out onto the field as FSU’s starting quarterback against the storied Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
“One of the most amazing comeback stories ever,” Gabriel says of Milton. “It’s just who KZ is and what he’s about. His mental toughness is off the charts.”
When Milton’s knee was destroyed in that 2018 regular-season finale against USF, he was rushed to the hospital at Tampa General, where he underwent emergency surgery to repair damaged nerves and a severed artery to restore blood flow in his lower right leg. Milton was told afterward that if it had been even an hour longer before doctors started the surgery, his leg would have likely been amputated.
Now, after all these years and tears and fears, after the multiple surgeries and excruciating rehab sessions, KZ is ready to play football again.
“I feel blessed,” Milton says.
We do too KZ.
We are blessed that football season is upon us and we get to watch you and all of the other great quarterbacks perform right here in the Funshine State.
Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel. com. Hit me up on Twitter @BianchiWrites and listen to my Open Mike radio show every weekday from 6 to 9:30 a.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and HD 101.1-2