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During a season that saw the Florida Gators defense depleted at the linebacker position, freshman Nick Smith was forced to sit to the side and watch.
The former Rivals three-star outside linebacker from Orlando, Florida was in Gainesville for a limited time before tearing his meniscus during workouts last July.
Former Gator All-American cornerback Keiwan Ratliff, who has known Smith for years now both off the field and as a player on his 7v7 squad, said he doesn’t believe it wasn’t the freshman's intention to redshirt but after the injury set his development back it made the most sense for the future of his career.
Smith has now spent the past few months—and football season—learning as a redshirt freshman and rehabbing from his injury. Thanks to years of early mornings at the Winter Garden YMCA playing basketball and training alongside Nick and his dad (Fernando Smith who played eight years as defensive end in the NFL), Ratliff was provided with a front row seat to a childhood that would shape a future college football player.
More importantly it gave him a glimpse of how Smith would handle his months of rehabbing.
“Nick, he’s always had a great work ethic and he’s always been a kid who knew how to work, who knew how to put the time in. So rehab for Nick—well rehab for nobody is gonna be easy but for a kid like Nick who’s worked and trained and done the extra stuff his whole life, I think it was easy for him to get back.”
While it may not have been the original plan, Ratliff sees this past year as a positive for Smith…and for that matter any kid who finds themselves sitting out a season.
“A lot of times I think redshirting is a blessing for most kids. Most of the kids in the recruiting class aren’t ready to play right away. So if you throw a kid out there too early then it may hurt him and his confidence and it may shape the rest of his career. And for Nick to sit back, watch it all play out, rehab and get healthy and get a new coaching staff come in and him to have his freshman year all over again, I think was a blessing in disguise.”
He was also able to spend his first season in Gainesville shaping his body from high schooler to college linebacker. When Smith was last tallied for the Florida roster he came in at 6-foot-1, 213-pounds. But as is one of the extra benefits of redshirting, Smith has had the privilege over the last few months of gaining extra time with the strength and conditioning team as they played around with his weight; and as Ratliff remembers, extra time in the weight room.
“Those guys, I can remember on Friday’s when we would be doing the walk through and getting ready for the game, the redshirt guys, that’ll be their heavy lifting day. So that’s an extra lift that they get in every week that the players that playing don’t get a chance to do. So they get a chance to build their body and the strength and conditioning coach gets extra time with them. They can put weight on guys, good weight. They can put whatever size and build they want a player to be during that redshirt year, they get a chance to do that.
So with Nick I think that helped him too because he got a chance to transform his body and work with a major college strength and conditioning program where he was training at the YMCA before.”
Ratliff said he’s not sure of Smith’s exact weight right now but “I know he looks good. Physically, when he came home [3 weeks ago] he looked good; he looked like he was in shape. He looked like he was ready to play to me.”
When it does in fact come time for him to play again—mostly in the box, according to Ratliff—that second freshman season will come under new head coach Dan Mullen, new defensive coordinator Todd Grantham and new linebacker coach Christian Robinson.
Florida Gator fans haven’t yet got to see the linebacker who totaled 96 tackles (15 for loss), forced three fumbles, recovered a fumble and intercepted a pass during his senior year of high school. When they do though Keiwan Ratliff can promise one thing.
“Nick is just a smart athlete with great size and can play multiple positions in multiple sports… Nick has always been a killer athlete and linebacker.”
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