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GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Highly promising freshman DJ Lagway threw for 456 yards and three touchdowns in his first collegiate start and Florida beat low-division Samford 45-7 on Saturday to provide a brief reprieve for devastated coach Billy Napier after a season-opening loss. .
Lagway completed his first seven passes while filling in for Graham Mertz (concussion) and showed why he was the consensus No. 1 quarterback recruit in the country last year. The 6-foot-3, 240-pound Texan connected on six passes that gained at least 30 yards — something the Gators (1-1) accomplished just 14 times last season.
“He was everything we thought he was,” Napier said.
Logway hooked up with Elijah Badger for 77 yards. He hit Chimera Dyke and Hayden Hansen for 44 and 40 yards, respectively. He found speedster Tank Hawkins rushing for a 36-yard score. He connected with Aidan Mizell for a 41-yard touchdown. And his shovel pass to Eugene Wilson III turned into an 85-yard score to cap an electric performance in the swamp.
“They are right, on the right track,” Napier said. “It’s impressive.”
Logway broke the school record for passing yards by a freshman, topping Chris Leake’s mark of 268 in 2003 against Kentucky.
Logway’s outing should at least give Napier pause when it comes to scheduling playing time in an all-important position moving forward — albeit against the overmatched Bulldogs (0-2), 38-point underdogs from the Football Championship Subdivision. After all, Logway has done what Mertz hasn’t in the two years since transferring from Wisconsin.
“My mindset was to take advantage of my opportunity, go out there and compete with some of the players around me,” Lagway said.
The Gators led 21-0 after Lagway’s perfectly delivered pass to Hawkins in the end zone, and the score could have been even more lopsided had freshman Jaden Baugh not punted at the goal line.
Samford, which gave the Gators a scare in the Swamp in 2021, avoided a shutout for a 75-yard scoring drive in the third.
By then, the Florida faithful had seen enough to start chanting his name from the lagway. And now Napier has a decision to make: return to Mertz or give a desperate fan base a glimmer of hope amid what looked like a completely dire season a week ago?
Then-no. 19 Miami beat the Gators 41-17 in Gainesville in Week 1, the kind of beatdown that had fans calling for Napier to be fired. Napier made it worse two days later by referring to the criticism as “what some guy in his basement in rural central Florida is saying on social media.”
You don’t need a front-row seat to the swamp to realize that Lagway is special.
He completed 18 of 25 passes and stayed in the game despite being drilled twice while scrambling. Wilson finished with six receptions for 141 yards, Badger caught three passes for 123 yards and Montrell Johnson rushed 15 times for 67 yards and two scores.
But the night was about Lagway.
“Oh, man, I love that kid,” defensive end Tyreek Sapp said. “I already knew it was going to be a successful night for him just the way he worked and the way he carried himself. He carried himself like a starting quarterback. Honestly, I wasn’t even surprised.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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