Spring football is here for Northeast Florida: 5 things to watch for 2024

Kickoff time has arrived.

Monday marks the beginning of spring football in 2024 for Northeast Florida high school teams, the first steps toward the games that count in the fall.

Even though it's nearly four months until the official kickoff of the 2024 season — that will come on Friday, Aug. 23 for the majority of Jacksonville-area teams — the excitement is already here.

Here are few of the storylines to watch this spring.

Mega-recruits in the spotlight

Northeast Florida fans are used to big-time recruiting classes, and the class of 2025 looks like one of the biggest.

Three of the USA TODAY Florida Network's top 10 spring recruits call Jacksonville home: Mandarin receiver Jaime Ffrench Jr. and defensive back Hylton (Drake) Stubbs, as well as Raines offensive lineman Solomon Thomas. Ffrench de-committed from Alabama in January, while Stubbs is committed to Southern California and Thomas is committed to Florida State.

More than a dozen other Northeast Florida seniors already have power-conference offers at positions ranging from quarterbacks to defensive tackle to defensive back, a number likely to grow further in the coming months.

Plugging the holes

Spring football is far more than a showcase for future stars, though: Among the primary tasks is developing replacements for Class of 2024 players that are moving on to the next level.

That's particularly pronounced at the quarterback position, where Northeast Florida watched one of its best-ever graduating classes last year. Starters from 2023 now on course for major college football include Trinity Christian's Colin Hurley (LSU), Bolles' DJ Moore (Coastal Carolina), Bishop Kenny's James Resar (Iowa), Yulee's Nikao Smith (Miami, preferred walk-on), Fletcher's Marcelis Tate (USF), First Coast's Rodney Tisdale Jr. (Western Kentucky) and Bartram Trail's Riley Trujillo (UCF).

For some of these programs, successors are already in place. At Bartram Trail, for instance, Jaden Weatherly saw extensive action as a sophomore and looks set to continue the Bears' long quarterback tradition.

Will Northeast Florida crown a champion?

While the First Coast returned three teams (Bradford, Mandarin and St. Augustine) to Florida High School Athletic Association finals last fall, the wait for a champion stretched into a third year. Trinity Christian, in 2021, is the most recent Jacksonville school to hoist an FHSAA trophy.

There's a chance that 2024 might be the year.

All three of last year's area finalists return major talent, like Mandarin's passing combination of quarterback Tramell Jones and receiver Jaime Ffrench Jr., St. Augustine's air attack with Locklan Hewlett, Carl Jenkins Jr. and Trenton Jones, and a Bradford defense with Jeremiah McKenzie and Branden Williams.

The big unknown: How will these teams fare in the FHSAA's new classification system, which scrapped the Metro-Suburban plan after a two-year cycle?

Transfers, transfers, transfers

No, high school football's version of the transfer portal isn't slowing down. If anything, it's accelerating faster than ever, at schools both public and private, and located both inside and outside Jacksonville. And, based on the pattern from past years, they may not be through yet.

While transfers obviously carry implications for fall, they also create some complications for spring. Under FHSAA rules, spring football is considered an extension of the fall, and players transferring schools — with certain exceptions — aren't eligible to compete in spring games for their new programs.

The FHSAA board of directors was scheduled to consider a measure last Monday that would have eliminated most of those restrictions, but the proposal was withdrawn without a vote.

The result: The lineups from 2023, and even from this spring, might end up looking very different by August's kickoff.

Coaching carousel spins onward

Once again, it's a challenge to keep track of the coaches without a scorecard.

While veterans like Trinity Christian's 34th-year head coach and 300-game winner Verlon Dorminey remain active on the sidelines, close to a dozen other programs have made switches on the sideline, even into April.

Northeast Florida's latest move came only days before spring practice, when Fernandina Beach announced former assistant Blake Willis as its third head coach in a two-month span. In March, the school had named Bobby Dan McGlohorn, previously an assistant at Camden County in Georgia, as head coach following the departure of Apollo Wright to college football. In a message to the Times-Union, McGlohorn declined to comment on the change.

A Fernandina Beach graduate, Willis played football for the Pirates in the late 2000s, lining up at center and linebacker. He later played college football at Jacksonville University under Kerwin Bell, and subsequently served as defensive coordinator for Fernandina Beach under Wright and Jude Swearingen.

Preparation time is short for Fernandina Beach, which plays its spring game at home on May 17 against Parker. The Pirates are scheduled to compete within the Sunshine State Athletic Conference this year, joining West Nassau as Northeast Florida's only non-magnet public schools in the SSAA for football.

Among the highest-profile moves: Bobby Ramsay, state champion at Mandarin in 2018, moved back to the Gateway Conference with Jackson after two seasons at Impact Christian.

Spring also marks a new start for several teams planning to take the plunge into 11-man football this fall. Caleb Davis leads the Defenders of Old Plank Christian and D'Angelo Jordan guides the Greyhounds of KIPP Bold City, while Duval Charter is returning to the 11-man game in a new era for the Panthers under former Jaguars cornerback Aaron Beasley.

What are the FHSAA spring football restrictions?

At the start, spring practice isn't quite full speed ahead.

The first two days of spring practice use helmets only. Teams can begin using shoulder pads from the third through fifth days, with full uniforms and contact drills beginning on the sixth day.

During the first five days of acclimatization, athletes are limited to three hours maximum, and while "deliberate body-to-body contact" is not permitted, players can still use blocking dummies, sleds and similar objects.

Once permitted, live contact in practice is limited to 40 minutes per day and can't be included in more than two consecutive practice sessions.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Spring football 2024: Northeast Florida high school preview