Diabate—was the risk to transfer “worth it”?

[Duhwayne]

Florida didn’t play well. Diabate had a good but not Lloyd kind of final year—second most tackles among LBs. If you were Diabate and a potential transfer asked, would you recommend it? Did he say anything after getting signed?

Florida had six draftees this year including a LB with fewer tackles than Diabate.

Personally I think Utah is a great place to play and gets guys in the league. It’s always a risk to transfer but I wonder if the difference is worth the risk vs. staying at a middle tier SEC school. I’m sure there will always be people willing to give it a shot.

https://www.si.com/college/florida/.amp/football/florida-gators-jacob-copeland-mohamoud-diabate-udfa-tennessee-titans-cleveland-browns

[DataUte]

Diabate did mention one reason for transferring for his last year was to play in a colder climate since half the NFL teams are cold weather teams. So signing with Cleveland was good. I hope he ends up better than being a UDFA, but frankly, seems like if you are going to get drafted in 6/7th round, might be better being a UDFA because you can weigh who is interested in you, depth at your position, coaches and partially choose where you go. Work hard and make the team, and he’ll do ok. Great that he got some gauranteed money too.

[2008 National Champ]

Diabate was dinged up early and didn’t get to showcase as much as I’m sure he would have liked. He improved significantly over the course of the year and there’s no guarantee that he would have gotten the exposure he wanted at Florida. Other than that, I’m not sure how we as fans would decide if a player transferring would be worthwhile.

[//r00t4Utes]

Well I assumed a big part of the reason was new head coach and coaching staff, as the reason he went into the transfer portal.