Florida Hires Tim Davis As Offensive Line Coach, Frank Verducci "To Pursue Other Interests"

The story from GatorZone's Scott Carter is headlined "Gators Hire Tim Davis as New Offensive Line Coach," but it's really both that story and another: Frank Verducci has been let go as Florida's offensive line coach. Carter's sentence on Verducci, reportedly fired, is terse and vague:

Davis replaces Frank Verducci, who has left to pursue other interests.

The Gainesville Sun's Robbie Andreu notes that no one really knows what Verducci's doing next, though he could head to the NFL, and Gator Country's Andrew Spivey reports that Verducci offered a 2013 recruit on Friday, so he was at least very recently performing job duties.

The educated guess I would make, considering that Verducci was brought to Florida in tandem with Charlie Weis, is that Verducci's days in Gainesville were numbered as soon as Weis accepted Kansas' head coaching job, and I'm sure that's what reporters will be trying to chase down in the coming days. We may learn more about this; we may not. Such is the way that things work under Nick Saban disciple and Florida coach Will Muschamp.

As for Davis, he comes to Florida from Utah, where he has coached for seven years since 1990, and previously worked with Muschamp, Saban, and Florida defensive coordinator Dan Quinn with the Miami Dolphins from 2005 to 2007, with Saban at Alabama in 2008, with Florida running backs coach Brian White during his time at Wisconsin from 1997 to 2001, and with Florida tight ends coach Derek Lewis at Minnesota in 2009 and 2010.

The GatorZone story emphasizing all these connections makes me think that Muschamp's trying to build a family of coaches who will do things his way and as hard and clean as he wants them to; the fact that Davis was the director of player personnel and handled some recruiting duties at Alabama in 2008 is interesting, too, but he was hired in February, after Alabama's fantastic 2008 recruiting class was hauled in, and left for Minnesota in November, so how much he did for recruiting for Saban is debatable.

Davis was also the offensive line coach for Pete Carroll at USC from 2002 to 2004, when the Trojans went 36-3 and won one BCS and one AP national title, and he's worked with tackles throughout his career. That might really help Florida: Xavier Nixon's underwhelming 2011 and Matt Patchan's inconsistency leave a lot of room for Chaz Green and recruit D.J. Humphries to lock down starting positions as bookends, and offensive tackle play is always at a premium in the SEC, the realm of the terrifying defensive end.