Del Rio rides rally to QB job

Florida junior Luke Del Rio, who opened the season as the third-team quarterback behind redshirt freshman Feleipe Franks and graduate transfer Malik Zaire, will start against Vanderbilt on Saturday.

It will be Del Rio’s first start since last season at Arkansas, when he suffered a shoulder injury in the Razorbacks’ 31-10 victory over the Gators. That was Florida’s only loss in Del Rio’s six games as a starter.

Del Rio won back his starting job by rallying the Gators to a 28-27 victory last week at Kentucky. He came off the bench with the Wildcats leading 27-14 and led two touchdown drives in the final 11 minutes. He completed 9 of 14 passes for 74 yards, including a 5-yard touchdown pass to Freddie Swain with 43 seconds left.

“He’s a vet. He’s been here,” Gators senior wide receiver Brandon Powell told the Gainesville Sun.

“He knows the offense. He knows where to go with the ball. It showed. He won us the game.”

Florida Coach Jim McElwain said he never considered Del Rio a thirdstringer, even though he didn’t play in the opener against Michigan, as Franks and Zaire did.

“He’s a guy that obviously had some injuries, had his shoulders worked on, had the knee,” McElwain said. “He’s consistently worked to get himself back.”

McElwain said Franks “didn’t do anything horrible” when he decided to replace him with Del Rio at Kentucky.

“We just felt like we needed a little bit of a kickstart at that juncture of the game, and Luke gave us that,” McElwain said. “I think it’s a testament to his work to prepare himself to continue to be the starter.

“Luke looks at it like, ‘My time will come, I’d better be prepared.’ In this case, he did a really good job of that.”