GAINESVILLE, Fla. – When offensive line coach John Hevesy stepped out onto the practice field on day one, he knew he was in for a challenging spring.

Four of his five starters were gone, and his job was to prepare a young inexperienced group for the next season.

With seven offensive linemen commits and five of them early enrolling, the group had a lot of growing to do coming into spring ball. That hasn’t tampered expectations, however, and this group has progressed at a solid rate.

“To me as a group and just all around, I think they’re doing a better job,” Hevesy said of his line. “They’re buying into the reps and the game and they’re doing a better job.”

The Gators have held a couple of scrimmages in preparation for the spring game. Although the line struggled in the first one a week ago, the group showed some improvement in the second scrimmage.

“You know, we’re getting there,” Hevesy said. “The 1s are doing a better job, they got better from the last scrimmage to Saturday’s scrimmage, we got better.”

As of right now, the starting unit is set - from what we have seen this spring - but the backups are a different story.

“The 2s are a bunch of young guys, you know just a bunch of high school kids, so to me, they’re getting better, but you just don’t know that right now,” Hevesy said. “They just have to learn a sense of urgency and its not high school… the sense of urgency and speed of the game.

“They have to start learning techniques and apply them now when it’s necessary. Not just be like ‘here’s what I did in high school’ just stand in there as a big guy.”

There is no question that depth is key to a unit like the offensive line. When the starters are, for the most part, inexperienced themselves it becomes that much more important.

The gap between the starting unit and the twos seems to be growing as the ones progress more and more, but it’s actually closer than Hevesy envisioned.

“Yeah, I’d say it’s growing,” Hevesy said of the gap. “The 1s are getting better, the 2s are getting better. I’d say it’s growing. It’s separating itself a little bit more.”

“I say that, but it’s also closer than I probably thought from day one, day two, and day three. Because day one it was huge, but they’ve closed it and it’s moving a little bit. It’s kind of weird saying that.”

Neither the ones or the twos are set to go right now and both need more time to develop. The good news? The entire unit has grown at a fairly exponential pace from day one of spring to now.

With only a few days until the spring game, this group is looking to continue that trend.

"I feel like we're progressing for sure,” guard Chris Bleich said. “If you watch spring practice from Day 1 to Day 10 now, like technique-wise, we're all getting better.

“I think the biggest thing is just like figuring out, for us younger guys, is just figuring out the playbook and everything. It's more mental for us at this point."