Billy Napier provides fall camp injury update on Florida QB DJ Lagway

Florida Gators head coach Billy Napier has a ton riding on sophomore quarterback DJ Lagway in 2025.

Lagway has superstar potential, and he demonstrated it in his freshman season, when he became the starter after Graham Mertz was lost for the season due to injury.

Lagway finished his freshman campaign with 1,915 yards and 12 touchdowns thrown compared to nine interceptions. Turnovers were an issue, yes, but as a freshman tossed into a tough position, he proved to be the quarterback Florida needed to turn things around and potentially save Napier's job.

The expectation for Lagway in 2025 is that he'll be one of the best quarterbacks in the SEC. Unfortunately for both him and the No. 15-ranked Gators, though, he's been stunted for much of this offseason due to injury.

Lagway missed much of spring ball with a shoulder injury, and he's been limited in fall camp due to a calf injury.

He is making progress, though, as Napier revealed on Monday.

“He took team reps today, which is good,” Napier said of Lagway, according to Thomas Goldkamp of On3/Rivals. “And obviously, he’s hitting — he had a great, full stack of throws last week, four days in a row. Didn’t scrimmage but did quite a bit of work that day. So yeah, he’s feeling much better and he’s moving around well.”

Florida starts the season off with a game against Long Island on Aug. 30, so if Lagway isn't ready to go by then it's not like backup quarterbacks Harrison Bailey or Aidan Warner couldn't lead the Gators to the win. Even if Lagway does play in that game, Bailey and/or Warner are almost guaranteed to get significant playing time in that game, anyhow.

Florida needs Lagway to get to 100 percent or as close to it as possible sooner rather than later, though. USF in Week 2 won't be a complete pushover, and then the Gators have to go to Baton Rouge to take on No. 9 LSU in Week 3.

The Gators could slow-play Lagway in hopes that he'll be completely ready to go by the LSU game, but every rep here in fall practice and at the beginning of the season in these "warm-up" games will matter for the sophomore quarterback.

He's still young and with so much pressure on his shoulders, the more exposure the better.