When Florida coach Urban Meyer announced that he would be taking a leave of absence rather than retire from coaching all together after health concerns, he said his gut feeling was that he would be back for the start of the 2010 season.
He made his return Wednesday instead, well before that time marker.
UF opened its spring practice schedule under a cloudy gray sky in Gainesville, and Meyer could be found in his usual spot on the field. He directed the proceedings but admitted to feeling himself hold back from time to time.
“Springtime I’m usually like this,” Meyer said. “Let the guys coach, and let everybody do their job, and see what we got.”
Meyer declined to talk in depth about the current status of his health, saying only “I feel fine, and I feel good.”
During special teams drills, he deferred a little more responsibility than normal to assistant coaches — D.J. Durkin in particular — and he was rarely loud on the field.
The most emotion he showed was during a non-contact passing drill when tight end Desmond Parks and freshman cornerback Jaylen Watkins collided after closing on a ball from different directions.
While numerous assistant coaches yelled at the shaken-up players to get off the ground, Meyer simply showed his approval of the effort by screaming, “Yeah! Yeah!”
“He’s back, he’s doing great, he’s on fire,” co-defensive coordinator Chuck Heater said. “He’s really excited about getting back today. This is a duck to water. If you’re a coach … this is why you do what you do.”
With four new assistant coaches — Durkin, Stan Drayton, Zach Azzanni and Teryl Austin — being integrated into the system this season, it was important to have strong leadership from the top.
Meyer has always provided that as a head coach, but Heater said the program didn’t lose it when he was forced to take his leave of absence.
“There were some really Herculean efforts by some people,” Heater said. “Steve Addazio has done a phenomenal job of just leading this thing in coaches time away.”
Addazio played a big role in hiring the new assistants, while Meyer kept the highly touted recruiting class together in a time of uncertainty.
Even during that span, Heater was confident in Meyer’s ability to scale back his intensity in order to remain on the field.
“I know him as a person,” Heater said. “I know his strength and his focus, and trying to just restructure a little bit, rewire a little bit. He’s a very willful guy. A very disciplined guy.”
Now, Meyer’s job will be to smoothly transition the program out of the Tim Tebow era and into the John Brantley era.
Brantley will be counted on to step out of Tebow’s shadow and into an immediate leadership role.
“It’s hard to be a leader when the other guy is around. The other guy is so overwhelming, Tim (is),” Meyer said. “It’s his huddle now.”
