Gators QB Kyle Trask making some headway

Kyle Trask has never been "the guy." At Manvel High School in Texas, he played but didn’t start. Eventual Houston commit D’Eriq King did, and after enrolling early at Florida, Trask has yet to even attempt a pass outside of the spring games or in practice.

After arriving in the spring of 2016, Trask redshirted his freshman year and suffered a broken foot in practice right before the season-opener against Michigan that kept him sidelined all of last season.

In now his third spring at Florida, Trask looked the best in the first scrimmage under new head coach Dan Mullen. Our unofficial stats had him going 12-of-18 for around 180 yards, three touchdowns and one interception.

Trask manned the second team offense well, and looked the best out of the four quarterbacks who took the field on Friday.

“I thought he did a pretty good job,” Mullen said. “I thought he had an interception and a tough turnover. There were some different things and different times in the scrimmage, to be honest with you there’s kind of a hit sheet of things I want to get done and I’m not always paying attention to who’s in the game schematically so we can teach all of them different things.

“I think one of the benefits of having me behind the quarterback there some. I was kind of checking some plays for them at the line of scrimmage. So now we can go back today and I can look and say, ‘hey, you see what happened right here, that’s why we made that check in that situation.’ So they can see, hey we were going to run this play but I gave them a kinda, (whistles), run this.”

“As we move forward into a game they’ll learn we have a play called, especially some shock plays or different things, and if we don’t get the look we want we’ll get it to something else that is a safe play against that look that we would scheme on an individual week.”

”We don’t spend a lot of time scheming each other in spring. We spend a lot of time going and just learning to play hard, learning to execute the plays. Part of that is, I know with Trask the one drive he did a great job driving down the field but actually checked some things at the line of scrimmage that I was checking for him that we would have in a gameplan in that moment.”

“He did a good job of communicating that and getting everybody to understand what we needed to do at the line of scrimmage.”

Trask has had an uphill battle his whole football career. He wasn’t the guy in high school, he was the other guy in the recruiting class, and he hasn’t been the guy so far at Florida.

But that’s exactly what Dan Mullen has been best at; developing guys that are not big-time recruits. He’s taken somebody like three-star, Dak Prescott, and turned him into one heck of a quarterback.

Dan Mullen is all about developing players and playing to their strengths. He does want his quarterbacks to be able to run his offense, but he understands there are certain aspects of someone’s game that he can utilize.

Mullen graduated with a masters and education, and has said time and time again how much he loves educating his players. Trask is in a very similar situation; a three-star quarterback out of high school who can be developed.

“Well, I don’t know I’ve had that situation,” Mullen said of Trask’s background. “I’ve had guys that didn’t start till their senior year because of different scenarios. Brian Johnson didn’t start. Fitzgerald didn’t start till his senior year. Because of other scenarios and guys on their team.”

“I haven’t had this situation before. But, again, that’s what you’re learning while you’re here. Our job is to coach you up and teach you how to do things the right way. He’s here, part of the team, part of the family. Our job is to coach him as hard we can and his job is to play as hard as he can and try to improve to the best of his ability every single day. That’s what it is.

“Whatever has happened in the past is the past for him. It’s about improving every day.”

While Trask remains the No. 2 QB right now, he has closed the gap on current No. 1, Feliepe Franks. Franks had a poor showing in the scrimmage and Trask impressed.

All of the quarterbacks met with Mullen to go over the film from the scrimmage to see what could be improved upon. Mullen also stood right behind the quarterbacks and called out checks and reads that he saw to the quarterbacks.

That seems to be one of Mullen’s biggest points of emphasis; making adjustments on the fly. He calls a play but wants his quarterbacks to be able to adjust under pressure and see the weaknesses in the defense.

On one drive during the scrimmage, Trask led the offense down on a TD drive in which he went 7-of-8 passing. And as mentioned above, Trask was making adjustments at the line and checking to different reads or plays.

If the trend continues from Friday's scrimmage after Franks’ poor showing and Trasks’ impressive one, we could see a different QB taking reps with the ones.