Skyler Mornhinweg transfers out, Luke Del Rio ‘expected’ to join Florida Gators QB stable

During a spring Southeastern Conference teleconference held Wednesday, Florida Gators head coach Jim McElwain casually announced that redshirt junior quarterback Skyler Mornhinweg has decided to transfer from the program.

Mornhinweg will join the Columbia football team after only seeing action as a spot starter for Florida in 2013. He ends his UF career having completing 69.8 percent of his passes for 344 yards with three touchdowns and one interception over the final three games of that season.

“We wish him the best. We’d love to have him stay here, but obviously as it sits, we’re right now with two scholarship quarterbacks,” McElwain said.

The departure of Mornhinweg does indeed leave the Gators with just two scholarship quarterbacks – redshirt freshman Will Grier and sophomore Treon Harris.

Grier has yet to play for Florida, while Harris accounted for 1,019 yards on 49.6 percent passing with nine touchdowns and three picks last season. He also averaged 4.4 yards per carry with three touchdowns in nine games (six starts) in 2014.

Grier and Harris battled for Florida’s vacant starting job in the spring, a competition that will continue into the summer.

With Mornhinweg now off the roster, the Gators’ de facto No. 3 signal caller is redshirt junior walk-on Jacob Guy.

Florida is looking at a number of transfer quarterbacks as it hopes to improve its depth at the position. Notre Dame graduate transfer Everett Golson visited the Gators on Tuesday and is one of a couple players the Gators have looked at, a list that also includes Vanderbilt’s Josh Grady.

Oregon State transfer Luke Del Rio is “expected to enroll” at UF this summer, according to Mark Long of the Associated Press, though he would not be immediately eligible as an undergraduate, barring an NCAA waiver. Del Rio will have two seasons of eligibility remaining.

Del Rio, a three-star signal caller who began his career at Alabama, transferred to OSU in January 2014 and was granted immediate eligibility. He hardly played, though, as Sean Mannion’s backup, completing 8-of-18 passes for 141 yards last year.

Like Mornhinweg, Del Rio is the son of a long-time NFL coach in Jack Del Rio, who is currently the head coach in Oakland. Marty Mornhinweg is the quarterbacks coach in Baltimore and former head coach of Detroit.

Mornhinweg is the second Gators quarterback to transfer this offseason, joining Jeff Driskel, who fell out of favor at Florida and moved to Louisiana Tech. UF has now seen five signal callers transfer in the last three offseasons, also joining Jacoby Brissett (NC State), Tyler Murphy (Boston College) and Max Staver (junior college).