Spring football doesn’t always tell the whole picture, especially when you are limited in what you can see, but sometimes certain things or certain people stand out that maybe didn’t before. With that in mind, junior cornerback Brian Edwards and redshirt freshman receiver Jaylin Jackson are a couple of players that have stood out from what I have seen and what I have heard from behind the scenes this spring.

Junior Cornerback Brian Edwards

Sometimes just the look of a player can give notice that there is going to be a big change. In the instance of Edwards, it took only the first glance to notice that the tall corner had lost some significant weight and looked leaner in his pads. Most of the time you want young football players to gain weight, but Edwards wanted to get faster and quicker, and so he worked on shedding a few and letting the strength staff

“I got leaner,” Edwards said Monday after practice. “I don’t want to put on too much weight, but be able to move. Speed, it’s all about speed.”

“I picked up some speed. It helps with the quickness. You know on the line, moving with different receivers, short receivers, slot receivers, fast, you know moving with them.”

Swamp247 has been at all open spring practices, but there have been a few behind the scenes. Edwards it seems, has been a pick off machine, including a few that have gone for touchdowns. He thinks the spring has gone about as well as it could for him so far.

“Spring’s going good,” he said. “I’m just trying to develop as a player on and off the field, whether it be in the meeting room, studying your film, or knowing the playbook even better.”

“Off the field I’ve been working hard, work when no one’s working. Then working on the field and just listening to coach. Coach Gray, he’s a great dude, a great coach. Then being with my teammates asking what went wrong after each and every rep, and then just working hard each and every practice.”

Edwards was a backup last season and played in eight games as a reserve and on special teams.

Redshirt Freshman Receiver/ Athlete Jaylin Jackson

The look of Edwards was something that helped carve an early opinion that something may be a good thing. You won’t get that from eyeballing Jackson. At 5-foot-8 and 171 pounds he’s one of the smallest guys that dresses out for Florida. But, more than the eyeball test in terms of physical stature Jackson impresses every day by making plays on the field.

The video above is just a snippet of what he did in two of the first three practices this spring. The word on the street is that he has consistently been a big play maker for the offense.

Count me as one that would love to see him be a return man on special teams as well as get on the field on offense.

Jackson appeared in two games a year ago and redshirted in his first year on campus out of Tampa’s Cambridge Christian School. He’s a walk-on now and was a high school teammate of redshirt freshman offensive tackle Richard Gouraige where he played quarterback, receiver, and cornerback.