GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Nick Savage shouted, “We’re all we got.” Together and vociferously, Florida’s players responded with, “We’re all we need.” Freddie Swain participated in the pregame hype session after the team’s meal that October day, and afterward, he stored the chant in the back of his mind.
On the field, after the team has practiced punt drills, usually around 30 minutes before kickoff, Swain has been the one in the middle of a large huddle, surrounded by teammates. For each game the past two seasons, he has delivered indelible, spirited speeches. He gathers players on the field and shares a message that weaves together the week and that game. Usually, he doesn’t plan what he is going to say in advance, which is not to say he’s unprepared; it’s just his way of remaining authentic in front of his guys.
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The Auburn game was different. Swain deviated. In a moment of reflection ahead of his final game in The Swamp on Saturday night against Florida State, Swain took The Athletic inside his process of pregame speeches and shared that the one ahead of Auburn was likely his best. He used Savage’s chant and quickly mixed a few words of his own. Immediately, he knew it worked.
“Guys, as soon as they came to me, they were already bouncing around,” Swain said. “I was like, ‘All right, I see you guys.’ Because sometimes when they come, they come dead or usually they are waiting on the message. But they already came jumping up. They kind of had me jumping. So, I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’ I didn’t really have to say much that time. But the little things I did say, they took to it, and we handled our business.”
Swain is usually one of the final players to come out of the locker room. When he speaks on the field before the game, he shifts his eyes with each sentence. He moves around, too. He wants to feel like he is speaking to everybody. By the time the huddle breaks down, he said, he can tell how things are going to go. His hope is that he helped. He doesn’t rehearse his speeches, doesn’t wonder about what he will say the night before games. His words are always different. And they tend to resonate.
“I just speak from the heart with whatever is on my mind at the time,” Swain said. “For guys to be able to look at me and kind of take their game to another level off of some of the things that I say … the connection that I have with the guys, it’s just a lot of respect. It’s good and it gives me a warm feeling.”
Said running back Dameon Pierce: “He’s our hype guy.”
The atmosphere inside The Swamp on Oct. 5 was raucous. “College GameDay” was in Gainesville, creating a pregame buzz for a nationally televised, top-10 matchup. The stadium was filled well before kickoff. The energy was palpable, the noise loud. Not all games are like that. That’s one reason why Swain’s role mattered so much, he learned.
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“Guys sometimes will come out there and look for that, to feed off of that energy, so I can never come half-stepping,” Swain said. “So I just come and speak from the heart, and guys understand that it comes from the heart and that it kind of hits different.”
Pregame logistics for the Gators changed when Dan Mullen took over for Jim McElwain, inviting time and opportunity for a player to emerge for a pregame leadership role. Swain, who also broke down huddles during practices, called his first experience delivering a pregame speech “eye-opening.”
“It was like a surreal moment,” Swain said. “It didn’t hit me until I got into the locker room. I was like, ‘Damn, there are some guys in here and they are listening to me, feeding off my energy.’ So that kind of let me know that, all right, guys are watching me, so you have to hold yourself to a different level now. You can’t have no days where you come in dead because guys are going to feed off that.”
That’s the maturity from Swain that the Gators will soon have to replace. He listed running back Malik Davis, receivers Kadarius Toney and Trevon Grimes and quarterbacks Kyle Trask, Emory Jones and Feleipe Franks as guys capable of occupying his role. Swain worked inside the Gators’ huddle because he commanded respect.
On another team, Swain, a former four-star recruit out of North Marion, may have posted bigger statistics over his four years, particularly his last two, when Florida’s receivers room grew in talent and depth while receptions were distributed in Mullen’s offense. He certainly wouldn’t have split time as a starter on many other squads like how he alternated each week at slot with Josh Hammond this season. The Florida fans who created the viral hashtag “SwainToTheSwamp” on Twitter four years ago knew of his potential in that way.
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“I ain’t going to lie, it was crazy, it was pretty cool,” Swain said. “I was like, all right, their fan base, whether they want you or not, you can always tell.”
What those fans probably didn’t know was how unselfish Swain would be and how he’d become a leader for a team in need of strong voices. Four years ago, they hoped he’d be hard to replace at the end of 2019. He will be; for some of those predictable reasons first imagined back in 2015, and more.
On Tuesday night, Swain couldn’t say what he planned to share with teammates in the minutes before Florida’s game against Florida State on Saturday. Naturally, he hadn’t yet thought about it, he said. Again, his words will just come from the heart. And it was within that same breath that he made it clear he loved his role. It was obvious he embraced it, too. And he’s going to miss it.
“Yeah,” Swain said, “I’m going to miss everything about Florida.”
(Photo: Mary Holt / Getty Images)
Will Sammon is a staff writer for The Athletic, covering the New York Mets. A native of Queens, New York, Will previously covered the Milwaukee Brewers and Florida Gators football for The Athletic, starting in 2018. Before that, he covered Mississippi State for The Clarion-Ledger, Mississippi’s largest newspaper. Follow Will on Twitter @WillSammon
