GAINESVILLE — Overlooking the white-sand beaches on the Florida Panhandle, Jon Sumrall and Buster Faulkner first hatched their plan to resurrect the Gators.
Two men who rose through the coaching ranks on opposite sides of the football had neighboring houses. Their families vacationed at the same time. Dreams of joining forces were discussed during these annual getaways off State Road 30A.
“My first couple of conversations with Buster about maybe being on my staff happened before I was the head coach at Florida,” Sumrall said. “It was like, ‘Hey, if one of these happens one day, what do you think?’ ”
The chance to team up arrived when Florida hired Sumrall Nov. 30. Within days, he hired Faulkner away from Georgia Tech.
Those Fourth of July pow-wows had paid off. Faulkner now arrives ready to deliver offensive fireworks to the Swamp.
“I’m fired up,” he said this week. “This is probably the most excited I’ve been in a long time.”
Fun ‘n’ Faulkner
Faulkner will hold himself to the highest standard.
A fan base that celebrated championships won with Steve Spurrier’s Fun ‘n’ Gun and later Tim Tebow and Percy Harvin leading Urban Meyer’s spread attack is starved for wins, points and excitement after four seasons bemoaning Billy Napier’s archaic, ineffective attacks.
Since the Meyer teams’ national-title runs in 2006 and 2008, only Dan Mullen — Meyer’s former offensive coordinator and play-calling savant — produced an entertaining product until his program lost its way in 2021.
By then, Faulkner was coaching quarterbacks at Georgia. But growing up outside Atlanta, he had watched Florida football from afar.
“I love Spurrier. Just his attitude. The way he went about it,” Faulkner said. “He would talk trash a little bit along the way. That was always fun to watch. As a kid, he was an outside-the-box thinker. He was ahead of his time — always adjusting.
“That [is] something that I take a great deal of pride in, just trying to stay ahead of the game.”
The visor-wearing 44-year-old is known for his ability to adapt. Faulkner’s philosophy has been a decades-long evolution.
An underdog with a bite
Faulkner was once a quarterback standing 5-foot-nothing with a 10-cent arm but a million-dollar head with a brain like a sponge.
At Valdosta State, Faulkner overcame his limited stature and skill set with intangibles and a high football IQ to lead his team to a national-title game.
“He has vinegar in his veins. He’s just one of those dudes,” said Dusty Bonner, Faulkner’s predecessor at signal-caller for the Blazers. “Totally undersized, didn’t have a real strong arm, athletic enough that he can make it work. But he just competed all the time.”
Before leaving for the Division II power in south Georgia, Faulkner was a scrappy three-year starter who led Atlanta’s Parkview High School to the 1997 4A state championship — the first state title in school history. He failed to add another title in college, losing a 31-24 heartbreaker to Grand Valley State during 2002 Division II championship — the 14-1 Blazers’ only loss.
That Faulkner even developed into a championship-caliber quarterback at any level was a testament to his toughness, work ethic and will.
“There’s probably a lot of folks who told him he couldn’t along the way,” Bonner said. “He’s about the only person that didn’t believe that.”
Lessons learned
Along the way, Faulkner developed a fluid offensive philosophy. These days, technology intensifies the challenge to keep defenses guessing.
“There’s so much film. There’s iPads on the sidelines,” Faulkner said. “There’s great coaches. There’s big staffs. They find tendencies. I’m always trying to find ways to stay ahead of that.
“When the playing field is even, you have to find a cutting edge.”
Faulkner’s database is vast.
Under head coach Cecil Flowe and offensive coordinator Robert Hill at Parkview, Faulkner engineered a run-oriented attack with a three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust ethos.
“Just keep moving the chains,” he recalled. “We won a lot of games doing that.”
Valdosta State won games by overwhelming defenses with the innovative “Air Raid” attack then taking college football by storm.
Former star quarterback Chris Hatcher returned to his alma mater in 2000 — when Faulkner was a freshman — and unleashed the “Air Raid” he’d run in the mid-90s under Hal Mumme to become the nation’s top D-II player.
Four-receiver sets, a shotgun formation and breakneck tempo were foreign to Faulkner. He would become fluent in the new language during two seasons as Bonner’s backup.
“A lot of times when you’re a young guy expected to play, it’s really easy to kind of be in practice and just be there,” Bonner said. “Instead of wasting those two years, he was trying to soak up as much as he could. He was always asking me questions. He was always engaged with the coaches, engaged in the film room from Day 1.”
The Blazers were 22-3 with Bonner at quarterback in 2000-01 when the Blazers averaged 41 points. Many games were blowouts, allowing Faulkner to gain experience and develop a merciless attitude.
“I can remember being in those games,” Bonner said. “Of course, you’re trying to run out the clock and not score any more points, or at least be reasonable. Teams would load the box because they knew we’re going to run the ball. They’re just pounding our running backs.
“Buster would just throw one over the top. The other coach, he’d be all pissed off. … ‘Well, you can’t load the box.’”
When his chance arrived, Faulkner threw 44 touchdowns as Valdosta State went 14-0, winning by an average of 19 points, to reach the school’s first national-title game.
Even though Faulkner came up short of a championship, he knew what it took to win. He’d also developed his own taste for style points.
Ever since Spurrier lit up scoreboards, Florida fans have yearned for yesteryear. The Fun ‘n’ Gun generated at least 50 points 48 times, a 32% rate during Spurrier’s 12 seasons.
The visor-wearing Faulkner won’t take his foot off the gas, either.
“He is so competitive and so dialed in,” said John Bonner, Dusty’s older brother. “He wants to score 100 points on you and leave you in the dust.”
A long and winding road to Florida
Faulkner spent his senior season at Texas A&M Commerce, where he set 10 school records in 2004 before he returned to Valdosta State as a student assistant in 2005.
After a graduate assistant role at Georgia in 2006, two more seasons at Valdosta State and one-year each at Central Arkansas and Murray State, Faulkner landed at Middle Tennessee State.
Four years as the offensive coordinator for Rick Stockstill, a former Florida State quarterback, changed Faulkner’s approach. A 2-10 finish with a pass-heavy attack in 2011 forced him to return to his roots.
Faulkner left Murfreesboro after the 2015 season for Arkansas State armed with the eclectic approach he still relies on.
“Had to reel in the passing game and adapt and kind of start running the football — that was 2012,” he recalled. “That’s really where it started. It was able to merge with a guy by the name of Glen Elarbee, who is now the offensive line coach at Tennessee, and he taught me a lot about running the football. So that’s where the merge kind of started.”
With Faulkner adapting to players instead of pigeon-holing them, Arkansas State became one of the nation’s top offenses in 2017, averaging 37.2 points.
Sumrall, who coached linebackers at fellow Sun Belt member Troy, took note.
The secret gets out
After a season at Southern Miss in 2019, Faulkner’s big break finally came when Kirby Smart hired him to coach quarterbacks at Georgia — 20 years after the two men first met.
In 2000, Smart was a 25-year-old secondary coach at Valdosta State, coaching under 29-year-old defensive coordinator Will Muschamp. When Muschamp joined Nick Saban at LSU in 2001, Smart replaced him.
Those two seasons as a backup facing the first-team defense provided a daily test and tutorial for Faulkner.
“When you’re getting better looks at practice, you can’t help but get better,” Dusty Bonner recalled. “Let’s put you like this: We were getting blitzed a lot early in practices. If we couldn’t figure it out, we couldn’t figure it out.
“It was a battle.”
Working under offensive coordinator Todd Monken, Faulkner found himself matching wits with Smart again.
Faulkner also found a kindred spirit in quarterback Stetson Bennett, an undersized former walk-on. While Bennett had more athletic ability and arm strength, Faulkner recognized the chip on his shoulder.
“Buster helped give Stetson a lot of confidence, in my opinion,” said John Bonner, a diehard Bulldogs fan. “I could see Buster kind of feeding that to Stetson: ‘Look here, your size don’t matter. Go play.’”
After Bennett helped Georgia to national titles in 2021 and 2022, Faulkner headed 90 minutes southwest and back to Atlanta to become Georgia Tech’s offensive coordinator.
There, Faulkner developed Texas A&M transfer Haynes King into one of the nation’s top dual-threat quarterbacks. The 2025 Yellow Jackets averaged 33.1 points, or 28th nationally, and 7.09 yards per play (eighth).
When Sumrall got to Florida, he quickly made one of the top hires in the coaching cycle when he landed Faulkner. He now aims to maximize a talented offense, featuring tailback Jadan Baugh and receivers Vernell Brown III, Dallas Wilson and Eric Singleton, who played for Faulkner at Georgia Tech.
A coaching collaboration several years in the making will be the key to the Gators’ future success.
“Florida’s a great place, got a great tradition, and I look forward to helping restore what’s going on here in the past,” Faulkner said. “I really believe that we can do it.”
Edgar Thompson can be reached at egthompson@orlandosentinel.com
