Transfer Wenger Translates Weis’ Offense For Gators

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Charlie Weis’ offense isn’t simple.  And when you consider the fact that Florida’s players are coming from Urban Meyer’s very different spread offense, it’s easy to imagine a lot of confused faces down in Gainesville this summer.

Enter Dan Wenger.  The transfer student played four years under Weis at Notre Dame.  Now he’s readying for his sixth year of eligibility after transferring to Florida.  And he’s acting as a translator for those teammates having trouble picking up Weis’ system:


“They won’t necessarily come to me about coaches, but they’ll ask me about stuff in the playbook.  Just the other night we had a few guys on our downtime going over stuff in the film room, helping them out, and we did that a lot all summer.  We watched film twice a week, and we were able to just try to get everyone more on the same page so we weren’t too far behind coming in.

I know what it’s like coming in with a new offense, coming in as a freshman with Coach Weis’ system — your head spins constantly.”


Wenger has gotten reps all across the Gators’ line in preseason camp, but he’s not expected to start in the fall.  Instead, his greatest contribution might during practice.

Will Muschamp told the St. Petersburg Times that having Wenger “has been very beneficial, especially in the summertime because we can’t have any contact as far as football is concerned… so in essence he was a coach on the field.”