Will Hill Making an Impact

Eighteen months ago he was one of the stars of the Gator recruiting class. Now sophomore safety Will Hill is showing why he was so highly regarded coming out of high school. Hill is seventh on the Gator defense in tackles with 32 despite sharing playing time with juniors Ahmad Black and Major Wright in Florida’s three safety rotation.

Will Hill registered a key QB sack on a blitz in the fourth quarter of the South Carolina game helping the Gators put away the Gamecocks. He’s part of a Gator defense that has held eight SEC opponents to 235 yards of total offense and just eight TD. Gator opponents have completed five TD passes against the Gators, but the Florida defense has intercepted 15 passes.

Hill talked with several media guys about a variety of topics including the fact that standout senior linebacker Ryan Stamper lacks foot speed.

On blitzing him and Haden against South Carolina:

“We’ve been sending Joe all year, actually. I’ve started playing nickel a little bit more like last year and he (Strong) called a few blitzes (for me).”

On what makes Haden such a great player:

“He’s just a competitor. That’s his edge. It doesn’t matter what it is; covering, blitzes, punt block or whatever he’s just a competitor.”

On being ready for the stretch run:

“We know it’s here. We’ve got about three games left so we can get back to the promised land and we’re just working hard so we win every game.”

On how special it is to go 8-0 in the SEC:

“The SEC everybody knows is the toughest conference but since we had most of the people back, healthy it made everything much easier this year. We still had some tough games, but we pulled together as a defense. In the SEC everybody can beat you.”

On people inside the team saying Stamper is slow:

“He is slow, but he has game speed. In the game it’s a whole different mentality. If you just run the clock on him in the forty he’s slow. If it’s a ball on the field or if he’s going after a player he’s far from slow. He’s a ball hawk. We call him old man Stamps”

On how it has worked out with him, Black and Wright sharing two jobs even though all three are on the field quite a bit:

“Actually I thought people were going end up crying and worry about this and worrying about that. But all three of us are level headed and we know that we’re going to play. It (the rotation) puts more athletes on the field. All three of us capable of playing and know what we’re doing so it helps us out a lot and (gives us) a better chance of winning.”