Few, including the freshman himself, saw the breakout 2022 campaign Trevor Etienne put together at Florida coming.
After Billy Napier's staff felt out its seemingly deep running back room and its early-season rotation, the first-year player from Jennings, La. would wind up splitting carries with veteran transfer Montrell Johnson. Etienne finished with a top-five yards per carry mark (6.09) in the SEC en route to compiling 719 yards and six touchdowns, while also factoring into the passing game and return game.
But when asking Etienne or UF assistant head coach/running backs coach Jabbar Juluke, much of the talk of progression has to do with the rising sophomore's game without the ball in his hands.
It begins with the role within the running back room and bellows out to the rest of the offense and the 2023 Gator team itself.
"Now that you have had success, how do you handle it?" Juluke said. "Are you going to be the teammate that you need to be all the time? Or are you gonna just say, 'I did what I did last year, and it's okay'? I think these guys have to be better leaders than they were last year and be more vocal and I’m challenging them to do that on a consistent basis."
Juluke thinks Etienne has the makeup to assimilate into a larger role beyond the position, especially based on his personality and improvement through the first year of his collegiate career.
"Trevor Etienne is the biggest kid you ever want to meet," he said. "He’s happy-go-lucky, you know, with a smile on his face. He’s very respectful. Nothing phases him, man. He’s fearless. And honestly man, I just tried not to mess him up last year, right, not try to put too much on his plate. And he said you need to do this, just let him be natural a little bit.
"So now, the game’s slowing down. He’s understanding it better, so some things, we expect even bigger things from him. But Trevor, he’s fearless, man. He don’t care about anything, you know. You can yell at him; he might start smiling if I yell, so I stopped yelling at his ass."
Etienne came from a run-dominant offense in high school, so the idea of a spread look and/or pass protection within it was something that took time to grasp. Plenty of work in that regard remains, too.
"It's really just, like, communication with O-line, that's really the hardest part for me," Etienne said. "Like, learning that terminology and knowing who to get in body position. Like, once I figure out all those things, I feel like I'll be better at it."
The public may not understand the intricacies of pass pro from the position, but there appears to be a landmark moment for Etienne to look back on as far as turning the corner on the off-ball responsibilities, against Vanderbilt late in the 2022 season.
"I'd say for me it was against Vandy," he said. "Because, I didn't have the best running game but it was probably the best pass-blocking game I had. And I was like, 'If I can just keep doing this, the running will come with it.' And that's kind of like when I got comfortable with the game."
It took extra time for Etienne to reach that comfort level as a freshman, especially having enrolled at the program in the summer months.
“Oh, it absolutely was a process for him," Juluke said. "He had to speed up his learning curve. We had to meet more, we had to have different things that he needed to do. We Zoomed at home. We did all those things to try to make it a lot easier for him as best as we could.”
Beyond leadership and blocking, both player and coach recently acknowledged all of the transition the program is going through offensively. A reshuffled offensive line and of course a new quarterback after Anthony Richardson's departure will impact the running back room aplenty.
“I feel like teams are going to have to respect the passing game more now," Etienne said. "Having a [quarterback] that runs a 4.43, you have to stack the box. You have to keep contain. You have to keep someone on him. I feel like the passing game is going to open up more now and I feel like we’ll be able to run the ball more effectively now.”
Johnson and Etienne both returning should put the onus of the Florida offense on the running back room before all others, at least initially, in how the Gators will be perceived. Should one or both take steps forward in 2023, it could represent one of the best one-two punches in the nation once again, something Etienne confirmed was "definitely" his personal opinion.
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