2017 Florida Football Has a High Ceiling, but Also a Low Floor
There is a certain degree of optimism around Florida football this year. Jim McElwain has been more aggressive in the way he talks about this team versus the last two, and there is reason to hope for better results from units that have underwhelmed for years like quarterback, receiver, and offensive line.
To an extent, though, it’s worth noting that where UF sits in the 2017 preseason is not too far off from where it sat in the 2013 preseason in one important respect: depth.
If Florida stays healthy, there’s not a team on its schedule it can’t beat. If it has bad injury luck, there’s scarely a team it can’t lose to.
The Gators won’t drop their games against Northern Colorado or UAB. However, a loss is possible in every other game.
FSU is a preseason top-three team for a reason. Michigan is top ten or 11 depending on which poll you look at. Seeing potential losses in those games needs no explanation.
The same goes for the SEC West matchups. Though they’re both home games, LSU and Texas A&M are talented enough to beat Florida. LSU has the better shot considering the Aggies have tended to fall apart the last few years after losing to Alabama, something they’ll do the week before coming to Gainesville. But the Tigers will have revenge on their minds and will be much better coached on offense this year while retaining their defensive quality.
As for the SEC East, every team except Florida and Tennessee returns a lot from a year ago and should be improved. The Gators already didn’t blow out Vandy or South Carolina last year, and Kentucky improved by miles over the course of 2016. Plus, Mizzou was a five-point win for UF absent the non-offensive touchdowns. Georgia has a talent advantage over UF, and Tennessee is about even in total team quality as measured by recruiting rankings.
I’m not trying to convince you that Florida has a chance to go 2–10. It won’t. It almost certainly won’t even go 4–8 in the worst case scenario either like the 2013 team did because the quarterback situation is far better.
Feleipe Franks, Luke Del Rio, and Malik Zaire are far better a top trio than Jeff Driskel, Tyler Murphy, and Skyler Mornhinweg were. Receiver is a far sight better too considering Florida’s third through fifth-leading receivers in 2013 were Trey Burton, Ahmad Fulwood, and Valdez Showers. If the likes of Tyrie Cleveland, Josh Hammond, and Freddie Swain aren’t noticeably better than those guys were—and all practice reports indicate that they are—the Gators have more problems than we know.
That being said, going 6–6 isn’t out of the realm of possibility. Dropping the two big non-conference games plus LSU and Georgia alone are entirely reasonable picks. At that point, they’d only have to lose two out of Tennessee, Texas A&M, and/or one of the road games (Kentucky, Mizzou, South Carolina) to hit six losses. With bad injury luck and some bad bounces of the ball, that could happen.
Just imagine if guys who missed some fall camp time also go out during the season. Martez Ivey, Kylan Johnson, and Nick Washington all play in critical spots without much behind them, and all missed time in August. So did Jawaan Taylor, though not as much. Dropping two top offensive lineman would be a disaster, as would losing any of the four linebackers the team can trust or more veterans in the secondary. All of this isn’t even mentioning the nine players with indefinite suspensions, which by definition do not have known endpoints.
Because of imbalances in recruiting across 2014–15 and natural transfers that happened during the Muschamp-to-McElwain transition, this is the year when Florida should be thin and lacking in upperclassmen. It’s a natural thing that hits many programs three or four years after coaching changes.
If Florida doesn’t lose any more key contributors and the suspensions don’t drag on past Week 2, then the Gators could easily end up winning the SEC East again and pushing ten wins by the end of the year.
However, it wouldn’t take more than about four or five injuries in the most critical spots to make this team have to grind out a bowl bid.
Adjust your expectations accordingly. The 2017 Florida Gators have a high ceiling, but don’t forget just how low the floor is too.
