Dooley’s Dozen: 12 best quarterback duos in Florida football history
There are a lot of positions of concern with the 2024 Florida team, but quarterback isn’t one of them.
In fact, watching Graham Mertz and DJ Lagway and how they interact might be the best reason to go to the spring game in April.
Many Gator fans have had visions of 2006 dancing in their heads ever since Lagway showed up on campus.
They see this two-quarterback rotation like they had that year when the Gators won the national championship.
Don’t get ahead of yourself. Try having a winning record first.
But we do remember some quarterback combos that did work for the Gators, so the Dooley’s Dozen will give you the 12 best that I can remember. You may want to know that Cam Newton does not make this list because he never really did anything at Florida other than throw a stolen laptop out of a window.
The obvious best one was...
… Chris Leak and Tim Tebow. Leak is underrated in Florida memories despite being the all-time leading passer and was once booed because Tebow came out of a game. But this was a perfect combination of a guy who could really spin it and a guy who would run over his brother to get a first down.
It wasn’t always great because the offense sometimes sputtered, but the end result was Florida’s national title.
Doug and Noah, FSU
Steve Spurrier had tried different combinations before in ’97 because the offense wasn’t quite as crisp as it was under Danny Wuerffel the previous year. But on a glorious night against the Seminoles. The alternating quarterbacks (Doug Johnson and Noah Brindise) got the job done.
When Johnson went down in the bowl game, he tried to keep it going against Penn State with Brindise and Palmer, but all they really did was hand the ball to Fred Taylor.
The soap opera of 1994
Terry Dean and Spurrier had their differences, but Dean was the starter of the first Gator team to start the season No. 1 in the preseason. When Dean struggled in the Auburn game, Spurrier turned to Danny Wuerffel and he took the helm for the rest of the season. Dean actually threw two more touchdown passes than Wuerffel that season.
They combined for 3,246 passing yards and Florida won the SEC Championship.
Larry Libertore and Bobby Dodd
No making fun of my age but Libertore was the star of the first game I ever saw. That was a couple of years later, but I have written books that have allowed me to research the 1960 season that kind of put Florida on the college football map (9-2 record).
Their numbers were nothing special, although Libertore was third on the team in rushing. The two quarterbacks took Florida to a special place in Ray Graves’ first season.
Sexy Rexy and the TV star
Rex Grossman is one of my favorite quarterbacks to play here. People forget that the year he won the SEC title in 2000, Jesse Palmer was the starter at the beginning of the season.
And it was Palmer who led Florida on the 91-yard drive in Knoxville to beat Tennessee (Jabar Gaffney did to catch it). Grossman threw for 21 TDs, while Palmer threw for 11 and ran for six more.
Kyle takes over the ship
OK, you might not like this one because if Feleipe Franks doesn’t get hurt we might have never seen Kyle Trask. But let us remember that Franks was 3-0 as a starter that season on a team that went 11-2.
Of course, they don’t win that Kentucky game without Trask coming off the bench. Franks was one of those quarterbacks that the fans never warmed up to, but he does have some wins on his gun belt.
Stranger Things, the prequel
Man, that 1998 season was weird. Florida lost two games to the two teams that played for the national title and could have won both of them. And those were their only two losses.
Johnson and Palmer split time with Dougie throwing 19 TD passes and Jesse 14. That may have been Florida’s best defensive team ever. That team just couldn’t catch a break.
Two guys you may not have expected
But I am a big believer in giving credit to anyone who wins a championship. And Austin Appleby and Luke Del Rio did just that under the most difficult of circumstances in 2016.
The Gators claimed the SEC East by beating LSU in a home game on the road. Appleby’s 98-yard TD pass to Tyrie Cleveland was the big blow. The two quarterbacks combined for 18 touchdown passes that season.
SOS and Tommy Shannon
This was in 1964 when. Spurrier was a sophomore and could finally play for the varsity (archaic rule?). Tommy Shannon was the senior quarterback and he was the starter over a guy who would eventually be a Heisman winner.
Shannon was the starter, but when they needed to throw, they would bring in Spurrier. He finished with six touchdown passes on the season. Shannon ran for one and was the team’s fourth-leading rusher.
Wuerffel and Kresser
Both of them won championships in 1996, Danny the big one and Eric the Div. II at Marshall. But they formed a difficult combo to beat in 1995 when Kresser threw for almost 1,000 yards and 12 touchdowns.
He even got a start against Northern Illinois that year to take some of the pressure off Wuerffel.
November to Remember
That’s what they called it in 1973 when Florida went to Don Gaffney, who had seen plenty of action already the previous year, to start against Auburn.
He replaced David Bowden, who caught a lot of heat from Gator fans (see, it’s not just social media) and was effective, but not built for the offense Doug Dickey wanted to run. The two quarterbacks combined for 13 of the 23 touchdowns Florida scored that season.
Tebow’s last stand
In 2009, Florida won all 12 regular season games before losing to Alabama in the SEC title game. That was the year when Tebow suffered the concussion against Kentucky and Florida turned to John Brantley.
Brantley finished that season with a better quarterback rating than Tebow and threw for seven touchdowns.
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