GAINESVILLE: Spring football practice is valuable for more reasons than merely identifying which rookies have the potential to be starters or which seasoned players are positioned to take on bigger responsibilities next season. It’s the rise of players you’ve never heard of yet who get a unique opportunity to excel.
Players like Tyreik Norwood, an edge rusher for the Florida Gators.
He is a seventh-year senior from Winchester, Tennessee, a town of 9,000 residents. We are unable to locate his high school recruitment profile on Rivals of 247Sports. He’ll play the first snap for the Gators the next snap.
However, this spring, he produced a play that, in the words of coach Billy Napier, “made both sides go crazy.” All because someone forgot to lock a door.
Two years ago, Norwood was walking by the Bull Gator statue in front of the stadium while visiting his girlfriend, who was a student at UF’s Levin College of Law, and looking into the construction management programme at UF. There was also the Heavener Football Complex. Norwood tried the front door because he wanted to see the Gators trophy cabinet.
It became visible.
In all honesty, Norwood claimed that God was asking him to “go take your chance.”