Graduate transfer legacy LB Anthony Harrell will play for Florida Gators in 2015

With just six returning scholarship linebackers returning for 2015 – and an even lesser number currently healthy – the Florida Gators have looked to a graduate transfer to improve their depth at the position ahead of the season.

Former three-star recruit Anthony Harrell (Tampa, FL) has graduated from Georgia Tech with a degree in business administration and announced on Twitter his intention join Florida on Monday ahead of the 2015 campaign.

[Update: Harrell is now listed as a redshirt senior on the Gators’ updated roster.]

“These past four years at Georgia Tech have been amazing. It is with a sad heart that I announce that I am leaving Georgia Tech and my Yellow Jacket football team,” he wrote. “I have been accepted to the University of Florida’s Masters Degree Program. My family and I have decided that it would be better for my future and where I want to go in life and that I will be attending and playing my 5th year of football at the University of Florida.”

Harrell wrote that as part of a six-paragraph reply to a tweet from Georgia Tech football’s official account, which announced the player as “suspended indefinitely” from the program.

Harrell (6-foot-3, 235 pounds), the son of former Gators walk-on LB James Harrell (1975-98), tore his ACL in 2013 but returned last season to register 19 tackles in 13 games as a redshirt junior with the Yellow Jackets.

Multiple Florida players that are aware of the younger Harrell’s decision has been congratulating him on joining the program via Twitter.

Harrell is the fourth immediately-eligible player to join the Gators via transfer ahead of the 2015 season, following senior quarterback/wide receiver Josh Grady (Vanderbilt), senior FCS All-American offensive lineman Mason Halter (Fordham) and freshman OL T.J. McCoy (NC State), a legacy in his own right.