Phil Trautwein is no stranger to success. As a player, he won two national championships as a key member of Florida’s offensive line in 2006 and 2008. As a coach, he helped lead Penn State to the College Football Playoff semifinals in 2024.
Now back in Gainesville, Trautwein made it clear that he wasn’t just back for a nostalgia trip. He was back to restore Florida to its former glory.
“I want to win national championships,” Trautwein said Monday. “For me, it's everything. Seeing what we did, what we can be. I want to get us back to winning national championships. That’s why I’m here.”
Trautwein officially returned to the Gators in January, nearly one month after ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported that he would be hired as UF’s new offensive line coach.
His resume speaks for itself. Over the past eight seasons, Trautwein has coached 39 all-conference selections, and just in his tenure at Penn State, he has seen seven players drafted from his offensive lines.
While he served six years in Happy Valley, Trautwein always saw a return to Florida as a possibility.
"I have an unbelievable love for the University of Florida,” Trautwein said. “For me as a coach, I always wanted to come back and coach where I played and where I learned football, where I learned how to be a man. Then being able to help young men through the same journey that I've been in.”
Trautwein shares an agent, Clint Dowdle, with Florida head coach Jon Sumrall, who introduced them. After a couple of phone conversations, Trautwein headed down to Gainesville to meet Florida’s new head ball coach.
“I came and introduced myself to him, met Coach Faulkner,” Sumrall said. “From there, he offered me the job. Not too soon after that, I accepted."
And from the moment he took the job, Trautwein has been hard on the recruiting trail. Notably, 2027 5-star interior offensive lineman Maxwell Hiller named Florida in his top 4 on Feb. 7, alongside Alabama, Tennessee and Ohio State.
Trautwein, however, isn’t focused on a star rating when he looks to recruit. He said that the number one thing he looks for in a recruit is someone “more talented” than himself. Then, it comes down to their mindset.
For Trautwein, that mindset boils down to no talent things, or NTT. That includes fundamentals, technique, preparation and approach.
“I’m going to recruit kids that love football, that want to be developed, that understand that development is first and also relationships,” Trautwein said. “I don’t think in every single recruit we’re going to be the highest bidder, so sometimes kids have to take a chance on me and know that I’m going to develop them and get them to the next level, which is the money they really want.”
Trautwein has shown his developmental skills over his coaching career.
Three of his players have been drafted in the first round, and one more is likely to be drafted in the first 32 picks in 2026: Chris Lindstrom, Zion Johnson, Olumuyiwa Fashanu and Olaivavega Ioane.
Lindstrom, Fashanu and Ioane were all 3-star recruits. Johnson was a 0-star. Now, Trautwein takes over an offensive line room stacked with former 3-and 4-star recruits.
Among those former highly-touted recruits are two transfers from Penn State: TJ Shanahan Jr. and Eagan Boyer. Both are likely to compete for starting roles ahead of the 2026 season.
“[TJ] is continuing to get better … That's why he's here, because he feels like me and him together can get him to reach his maximum potential and get to where his dreams are, which is the NFL and be drafted high,” Trautwein said. “[And] Eagan came to Penn State at 235 pounds. Now he's 300. That was kind of me …I love who he is, and he's coming out every single day and helping me set the standard and helping me embrace my culture and everything.”
Shanahan and Boyer join 18 other offensive linemen on the roster, all of whom are competing for just 5 starting positions. An early standout, according to Trautwein, is redshirt junior guard Roderick Kearney.
“He’s kind of the leader right now in the room. He loves football,” Trautwein said of Kearney.
The competition, however, seems to be bringing out the best in Florida’s offensive line room, and Trautwein said he is excited for the future of the position group.
But for the offensive line and the team as a whole to succeed, Trautwein made it clear that it all began with culture.
"No one's gonna outwork us, and no one's gonna come into a game out-preparing us,” Traitwein said. “So we just have to make sure that's the stuff that we can control, because you see, at the University of Florida, you're gonna have great talent. But it's the no-talent things that make you special and make you elite. So that's what we're going to do, and that's who we're going to be as coaches."
Contact Max Bernstein at mbernstein@alligator.org. Follow him on X @maxbernstein23.
Max is a junior sports journalism student in his seventh semester at The Alligator. He serves as The Alligator's assistant sports editor and football beat coordinator. He previously served as The Alligator's sports editor and as a reporter for football, women's tennis, volleyball, lacrosse and sports enterprise. He also has made multiple appearances on the Paul Finebaum Show. Max wants to shoutout his cats, Scooter and Zoe, and niche former Florida Panthers players (shoutout Maxim Mamin).
