Just seven months ago, Demarcus Robinson was a senior for the Peach County High School football team in Fort Valley, Georgia.
The 6-foot-2, 195-pound wide receiver led his team to the quarterfinals of the 2012 GHSA Class AAA state championship. He was named to the All-State team after a senior season that saw him make 53 receptions for 1,000 yards and 15 touchdowns. He was being heavily recruited by Clemson, South Carolina and Florida among others, but the Gators had two things going for them that nobody else did.
First was that Robinson, the nephew of former NFL wide receiver Marcus Robinson, who played for the Chicago Bears, Baltimore Ravens and Minnesota Vikings, grew up rooting for the Gators. Second, Florida was losing three of its top four receivers and those three receivers had accounted for 90 receptions, 916 yards and six touchdowns in 2012.
The Gators were going to need an infusion of new blood at the receiver positions. Robinson knew there would be the possibility of early playing time for him if he signed with Will Muschamp’s Gators so it really wasn’t a tough decision. Robinson signed and enrolled early so he could participate in spring practice.
This past Saturday he made his presence known in Florida’s Orange and Blue Game despite the fact that he was playing with a high ankle sprain suffered during the spring practices.
Muschamp did not hold a regular spring game but rather an afternoon that consisted of about 40 plays from scrimmage. Robinson showed what he is capable of on the second series of scrimmage snaps when he leaped high over cornerback Loucheiz Purifoy and hauled in a deep pass from second-string quarterback Tyler Murphy.
“Obviously Demarcus Robinson is a guy that is going to help us,” Muschamp said. “The tough thing with Demarcus is that he hurt his ankle, I want to say on the third or fourth time out in camp and then he missed eight practices. He’s coming back through and trying to get back in. I think the guy, athletically, is what we want.”
Quinton Dunbar, Andre Debose and Trey Burton are the top returning receivers on the Florida depth chart, but Robinson showed enough in the spring to be considered a viable option for Florida quarterback Jeff Driskel, who is looking to stretch the field more often this season.
“Make more vertical plays,” he said. “Last year it was more hand the ball off, hand the ball off, third down get the conversion. It’s hard to just to put drives together consistently. You’ve got to hit big plays in order to score touchdowns and we need to do that more.”
Driskel said Robinson fits right into those plans.
“He’s a big body. He can go inside to make a slant catch and catch and fall down, or he can go vertical and jump and make a tough catch,” the Gators quarterback said. “He can catch the ball when he is in different body positions and different body angles, and he is a guy who can blow by. He’s a guy who has good ball skills. He is going to be a big-time player and he’s definitely going to show up next year.”
Robinson has made an impression on Florida’s secondary players this spring, especially with the way he handled the press coverage the defensive backs put on the true freshman receiver.
“He’s got an injury and instead of backing down, he took on the challenge to go into the training room and get better and pushed out there while he was hurting,” said defensive back Jaylen Watkins said. “Today he was limping and still making great catches. When you see a guy like that, you know he has something great.”
Even though the Gators did not have a normal game with one team winning and another losing, Demarcus Robinson came out a big winner on Saturday.