Florida’s new soccer coach Jon Sumrall made his first main rent with longtime Kentucky defensive coordinator Brad White accepting the identical place Thursday in Gainesville.
White, 43, was Kentucky’s defensive coordinator and out of doors linebackers coach from 2019-25, and was that place’s coach in 2018. He spent the six prior seasons with the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts (2012-17), rising from defensive high quality management coach to outdoors linebackers coach.
“Brad is among the finest defensive minds in soccer and I am thrilled he will likely be becoming a member of us in Gainesville,” stated Sumrall, an assistant with White at Kentucky from 2019-21, together with the ultimate 12 months as co-defensive coordinators. “Brad has led probably the greatest defenses within the SEC the final seven years and has in depth expertise within the NFL as nicely. His defenses possess the precise traits we’re going to have right here at Florida, and I am unable to consider a greater chief for that unit.”
The Wildcats’ protection ranked within the FBS prime 45 from 2018-24, together with prime 25 in 2018, 2018, 2021 and 2022.
“I am able to hit the bottom working on serving to assemble a protection that may make Gator Nation proud,” White stated in a information launch from the athletic division. “Coach has already acknowledged the imaginative and prescient: be essentially the most feared protection in school soccer. Now comes the laborious work essential to make that imaginative and prescient a actuality. And whereas scheme has its significance, essentially the most crucial focus we’ll have as a defensive workers will likely be to develop the extremely gifted playmakers we recruit and demand that they play with a tempo and violence second to none.”
A kind of gamers at Kentucky was linebacker Josh Hines-Allen, now a stellar defensive finish with the Jacksonville Jaguars. A primary-team All-America choice and the Southeastern Convention Defensive Participant of the Yr together with quite a few nationwide particular person awards in 2018, Hines-Allen praised his former place coach.
“Initially, they’re getting an amazing individual, an amazing communicator, a man that desires the very best for his gamers,” Hines-Allen stated within the information launch. “He was my positional coach once I had him, and the time we spent collectively helped me develop and be the place I’m immediately. I give him a whole lot of credit score and a whole lot of respect and love. He is completed a whole lot of good issues for that program. Hopefully, he continues to have that success at Florida.”
White additionally labored at Kentucky with Liam Coen, the Jaguars’ first-year head coach, who referred to as him “one of many smarter guys, coaches, I have been round at any degree.”
“True instructor of the sport,” stated Coen, the offensive coordinator at Kentucky in 2021 and 2023. “I discovered a lot from Brad when it comes to the best way that he noticed the sport. He is among the extra detailed, organized coaches I have been round when it comes to his course of all through the week, his checklists all through the week after which his recreation plans to have the ability to go and trigger points for folks.”
White was a beginning linebacker at Wake Forest, the place he graduated in 2004.
–Area Stage Media
