Florida football recruiting: Promising edge rusher Mohamoud Diabate commits to Gators

The Florida Gators entered the summer without much of a recruiting class to speak of.

They will exit it with a substantially better foundation — and potentially the best crop of linebackers any program is set to bring in for the 2019 cycle.

Alabama linebacker Mohamoud Diabate — that’s Moh-MOOD dee-uh-BOT-ay, for the record — helped seal both of those facts on Wednesday night, committing to the Gators via a tweet with an embedded video produced in part by AL.com.

Dan Mullen followed that up with a GIF of his own.

And while Diabate — the first future Gator I can recall thanking Allah in a commitment tweet, which is cool — is from not just Alabama but from Auburn, specifically, his commitment to Florida was long-anticipated: Florida held 86 percent of the predictions for Diabate on 247Sports’ Crystal Ball feature.

While the Gators will have to hang on to the four-star pass-rusher for the rest of the 2019 cycle, keeping him in the fold will give them a prospect currently ranked inside the nation’s top 150 in the 247Sports Composite, and one who flashes great speed off the edge in his highlight reel.

Diabate is listed at 6’3” and just 215 pounds by 247Sports, which likely makes a redshirt year spent bulking up a prerequisite before he sees the field for Florida. But the potential is obviously there — and Diabate is now part of a crew of linebacker commits that also includes four-stars Diwun Black and Tyron Hopper and three-star Jesiah Pierre. (Black, Diabate, and Hopper are Florida’s three highest-rated commits.)

Florida’s class, buoyed by those LBs, is now within the nation’s top 25, jumping to No. 23 per the 247Composite rankings after Diabate’s commitment.

And with just 13 commitments to date, there’s still a long way for the Gators to go on the trail.