Frankly, he has a chance.
Feleipe Franks, the redshirt freshman quarterback for the University of Florida, established himself as the team’s front-runner in Friday night’s spring game. He led the Orange team (the starters) to a 31-0 victory over the Blues Friday night.
Franks hit eight of 14 passes for 119 yards and a touchdown.
“He did all right,” Gators coach Jim McElwain said. “He’s ahead.”
Franks seemed much more poised than a year ago, when he threw three interceptions in the spring.
Franks, the 6-foot-6, 219-pound redshirt freshman from Crawfordville, Fla., didn’t waste any time showing off his arm strength and touch, lofting a 46-yard completion to sophomore wide receiver Josh Hammond on the game’s first series to set up a touchdown and later fired a 16-yard scoring strike to junior wideout Antonio Callaway.
“Obviously, that was a big confidence booster, and a big role of playing quarterback is having confidence,” Franks said. “It’s been a tremendous difference this year [compared to last year].”
Kyle Trask, who worked with the starters in the second half, was six of 15 for 66 yards and an interception.
All the quarterbacks did a decent job,” McElwain said. “We kept it pretty vanilla. There is no sense in showing all we’re going to do when we open up in that first ball game.
“(Franks) played decent, yet Kyle took that drive down pretty good. I’m excited about Kadarius (Toney.) We know what we have there. He will be a guy that needs to touch the ball for us.
“I hope you saw what I saw. Those quarterbacks were very comfortable, you could see them setting their feet and the ball thrown from the pocket. I think we’re going to be all right.”
McElwain said the next thing is for the Gators to pick a starter at quarterback and develop him.
