Sports

Florida Football Replaces Unexpected Dropout With 23-Year-Old Quarterback On His Fourth Team In Six Years

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Harrison Bailey Florida Quarterback
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Florida are replacing Deshawn Purdie with Harrison Bailey. The Gators needed to sign a backup quarterback for the 2025 college football season and utilized the transfer portal to do so.

Their original plans were foiled by an unusual sequence of events!

Five-star freshman D.J. Lagway really came into his own as the starter down the stretch in 2024. He is penciled in (with non-erasable ink) as QB1 for Florida next season after he saved Billy Napier’s job.

With that in mind, former Charlotte quarterback Deshawn Purdie committed to the Gators at the end of December. The rising sophomore threw for 1,802 yards, 10 touchdowns and six interceptions during his lone season with the 49ers. His commitment filled the need for a backup with experience. It was a great addition as a depth piece, not as a potential starter.

However, Purdie did not show up to class for the first day of the spring semester last Monday. He withdrew all of his signed documents at Florida and ended his tenure with the program after just 22 days.

There were a lot of rumors about the reason Purdie’s departure but none of them were ever confirmed. Wake Forest snatched him up not long thereafter.

That left the Gators with an opening, again.

They replaced Deshawn Purdie with a 23-year-old sixth-year senior who will play for his fourth different school since 2020. Harrison Bailey officially signed on Monday.

Bailey was a four-star recruit in the Class of 2020 alongside guys like Bryce Young, C.J. Stroud and Anthony Richardson. The Georgia-native played two years at Tennessee, one year at UNLV and two years at Louisville with four starts in five seasons. He was most recently named as the MVP of the Sun Bowl. This upcoming college football season will be his sixth and final.