15 Days to Gator Football – #15 Wayne Peace ’80-’83

[Escambia94]

I know. Everyone expected a different #15 to be highlighted, but I wanted to take this time to highlight a lesser known Gator, Wayne Lamar Peace of Lakeland, Florida. At one time, Wayne owned the NCAA record for single-season completion percentage with 70.7% (broken a year later by Steve Young of Brigham Young). He was not known as a downfield passer, but he knew how to work with the talent around him by stretching the field horizontally with high percentage passes. His most memorable pass, a game winner over Miami on September 4, 1982, was nicknamed “the Catch” (not to be confused with Joe Montana to Dwight Clark “the Catch” on January 10, 1982) by Gator fans due to the implications of beating such a powerful Miami team. It was probably called “the Catch”, because it certainly was too ugly to be known as “the Throw”–a fluttering duck that running back James Jones somehow snagged with one hand in the back of the Florida Field end zone to seal the 17-14 victory. Wayne still ranks 2nd in UF history with a career passing percentage of 61.6 for 7,206 yards.

 

[DRU2012]

Wayne Peace was the best QB we had while I was at UF, though he didn't take over 'til my senior year . Although he didn't have a "cannon arm", he was sharp, efficient, a poised leader on the field--and he generally DID "get it there" on time, where it had to be when throwing the long-ball, something that was required in an offense that was an early version of the "fun and gun" (as I recall it, Peace' stint as QB either included or directly followed Shanahan's one "stepping-stone" season as our OC, when that nickname was first used for our offense--am I remembering this right?).

 

[Escambia94]

I'm a little younger. I just remember him beating USC. I remember a horizontal game. I do not remember what Shanahan did to the offense.