Whatever you’ve heard about Florida football, believe it when you see it

I heard Pup Howard is killing it.

Howard, whose real name is Grayson, is a linebacker for Florida’s football team. Transferred from South Carolina where he was a consummate tackler.

The Gators didn’t have much of that last season, but I hear Howard was a fighting demon at UF. I heard it from a bird, who read it on a message board from a guy who knows someone who knows the guy who delivers ice to Florida dispensaries.

So take it for what it’s worth, which isn’t enough to buy a cup of water at Wawa.

And that’s the way Billy Napier likes it.

We’re at T-Minus two weeks before the Gators opener against Miami. We don’t know any more about the Gators than we did two months ago.

This is largely by design. Practices are closed, aside from glimpses given to reporters who are forbidden from reporting anything juicy if they happen to see it.

I’m not complaining. Given the stakes, it’s understandable why Napier is concerned that Mario Cristobal might hire Connor Stallions to dress up as a Gatorade bottle and secretly videotape UF’s two-minute drill.

But nature and football fans hate the vacuum. So the void of substantive news is largely filled by innuendo, wishcasting, scuttlebutt and over-analysis.

If you’re a glass-half-full kind of person, you could argue that the pieces are there for a change. If you are a glass half empty, you can declare that such a discussion is a mirage.

That said, there are a few things we can be pretty sure about. Graham Mertz will be a solid quarterback. Eugene Wilson III will leave a lot of defenders caught in the air.

Jeremy Crawshaw is going to throw some footballs into low Earth orbit. Jaden Rashada won’t run across the field to hug Napier after the Georgia game.

Beyond that, it’s a guessing game. I have no doubt that Howard and the defense had bright moments in practice, but many came against UF’s second-team offense.

Speaking of which, DJ Lagway sure made some catchy tracks. But he didn’t have to do them against Miami’s defensive line with 90,000 people watching.

As SEC fan Winston Churchill would say, the Gators are “a riddle shrouded in mystery in a horrifying schedule.” I doubt even Napier knows for sure what he has and is allowed to watch training.

The rest of us get fragments. Media viewing sessions last approximately 15 minutes. Reporters whip out their phones and quickly post videos, which are then dissected by the football-hungry masses.

A piece on Gators Online last week showed Mertz making a nice deep pass to Arlis Boardingham. The comments were instructive.

“(Boardingham) killed dynasty mode for me!”

“(Miami QB) Cam Ward could go for 400.”

“Are the receivers that good or those two still bad?”

Excellent question.

We might have gotten a little more clarity on Saturday. The Gators moved from the practice fields to Ben Hill Griffin Stadium for their second full game of training camp. Friends and families of the players were allowed to watch the whole shebang.

“How many people registered?” I asked the lady who monitors the permit list.

“A good amount,” she said.

I had counted 207, at least a dozen of whom probably live-tweeted the event. Hopefully Cristobal’s X account was down.

The media came in for starters and I can respectfully report that it was hot. The players were pretty much in sync with the hamstring stretches.

Crawshaw’s mustache is already in mid-season form. Quarterbacks completed 93.4 percent of their passes to wide open receivers.

Ja’Quavion Fraziars was on crutches. There has been no official comment on his injury, but we hear he will either be fine or need a leg transplant.

After 18 minutes of close observation, the media was dismissed and the game could begin. Various sources have reported that the defense is ahead of the offense, although the offense is ahead of where it was at this time last year.

All of this means the Gators are on the verge of a dynasty. Or a crash.

We will finally start getting hard evidence on August 31st^St.

Until then, I hear Pup Howard is killing it.

David Whitley is the sports columnist for The Gainesville Sun. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow X @DavidEWhitley

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Florida football will be a mystery until Miami arrives