Over/Under: Are the Florida Gators Overrated, Underrated or Just About Right Where They Should Be?
Updated: Aug 13, 2021
The Coaches Poll came out earlier this week with the usual suspects ranked 1-5: (1) Alabama, (2) Clemson, (3) Oklahoma, (4) Ohio State and (5) Georgia. From the moment the final whistle blew, signaling the end of Alabama’s 52-24 win over Ohio State for the 2020 national championship, anyone who follows college football with any measure of consistency could have predicted those five teams would be ranked 1-5 in some order for 2021.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
There are a few newbies in the rest of the top 10: (6) Texas A&M, (7) Notre Dame, (8) Iowa State, (9) North Carolina and (10) Cincinnati, the only Group of Five team to crack the top 10.
This will be year four of the Dan Mullen era at Florida. The Gators were unranked in year one (2018) but they’ve started the season ranked eighth in the two years since. In the new Coaches Poll the Gators are No. 11. Florida’s highest 2021 ranking is from Sporting News, which places the Gators eighth, and the lowest is Phil Steele, who has UF outside his top 25. In between are Athlon at No. 11, Lindy’s and ESPN at No. 12 and CBS Sports at No. 13.
So what are the Gators? Overrated at No. 8? Just right between 11 and 13? Or vastly underrated outside the top 25?
Before examining Florida, let’s take a look at the 10 teams ranked ahead of the Gators in the Coaches Poll. Which teams might be a tad overrated will go a long way toward determining if the Gators can move up from their current position.
You can make the case that Alabama is overrated even though there is so much talent in Tuscaloosa that Nick Saban could almost get the Crimson Tide into the SEC Championship Game by the force of his will. Alabama has had 10 offensive starters drafted in the last two years and this year the Tide breaks in a brand new quarterback (Bryce Young), who has never started a game and has the added pressure of a million dollars’ worth of NIL deals. One of those little details nobody seems to want to talk about is how big NIL deals are going to add tons of pressure on the shoulders of players. Circle that September 4 season opener with Miami and the game in Gainesville with the Gators two weeks later. Alabama’s national championship aspirations could be over almost before they can get their mojo going if they happen to lose those two games.
You can make a case that Clemson is a year away, but overrated? If they win their season opener with Georgia in Charlotte on September 4, there isn’t a game on the schedule the Tigers won’t be favored by fewer than two touchdowns. Clemson replaces All-Interplanetary QB Trevor Lawrence but in his two true freshman starts last year DJ Uiagalelei looked like he might be every bit as good as Lawrence. The defense is young but still might be the best in the country. Scary thought. There are only seven seniors on the two-deep.
Oklahoma seems to begin every year in the top five and sometimes makes the playoff, but the Sooners have yet to make it beyond the semifinal. This year they have the big target on their backs for joining Texas in abandoning their Big 12 brethren to join the SEC. Every Big 12 road game is going to be an old-fashioned hatefest, particularly the final game of the season at Stillwater against Okie State. Expectations are that Lincoln Riley will turn Spencer Rattler into his next Heisman Trophy quarterback but the offensive line has to be rebuilt and defense has never been the forte of any team in the Big 12. It’s easy to make a case that Oklahoma is overrated based on experience but there may not be even two losable games on the schedule.
It is also easy to make the case that Ohio State is overrated. There isn’t a quarterback that has taken a collegiate snap and seven starters have to be replaced on a defense that Alabama torched for 52 points in the national championship game. None of this really matters because the Big Ten really isn’t all that good and none of the road games are all that difficult, even the season-ender against Michigan in the Big House. Ohio State can go 12-0, make the playoff and still be overrated.
Not a year goes by that you can’t make the case that Georgia is overrated but other than Clemson in the season opener and Florida in Jacksonville on October 30, it might be difficult for Georgia to make it through the season with fewer than 10 wins. Of course, that’s true every year. Georgia is loaded with talent, but that’s true every year and the Bulldogs don’t win the national title. Safe to say, Georgia is locked and loaded for another run at one of those nifty near national championships. The last real one was in 1980, some 14,833 days ago.
Texas A&M? If you were alive the last time the Aggies won a national championship (1939) then you’re probably pushing 90 years old, which means you’re hanging on and prayerfully asking God not to call you home until you can see history repeat itself some 82 years later. Until the Aggies prove they can make the SEC Championship Game – they’ve been in the league since 2012 and haven’t made it yet – consider them overrated. They will have a brand-new quarterback in redshirt freshman Haynes King to go against an SEC West schedule which means they play Alabama, which skunked them by 28 last year, and LSU (this year in Baton Rouge).
Notre Dame has no business ranked in the top 10, not with only eight returning starters (two on offense, six on defense) from the team that lost in blowout fashion to Clemson in the ACC Championship Game and to Alabama in the CFP semifinal. Clemson isn’t on the schedule this year, but the Irish open the season at Florida State and they play Wisconsin, Cincinnati, Southern Cal and North Carolina. That’s not the kind of schedule conducive to a run at the national championship.
This is rarified air for Iowa State, which is 94th all-time in win-loss percentage (.0456) in Division I. When the Cyclones won nine games in 2020, it marked only the second time they’ve won that many games in a season since they started playing football in 1892. It’s not exactly a killer of a schedule, but Iowa, Oklahoma State, (at) West Virginia, Texas and (at) Oklahoma is enough of an obstacle course that it’s impossible to look at Iowa State without thinking overrated.
North Carolina might be underrated despite losing two thousand-yard rushers and its top four receivers. The entire offensive line is back to protect Sam Howell, who might be the nation’s best collegiate QB. Overall Mack Brown has eight starters returning on each side of the ball and a favorable schedule – Miami home and at Notre Dame back-to-back are the toughest games. Win those two and the Tar Heels have a very good shot at the ACC Championship Game and Clemson.
Then there is Cincinnati, heavy favorite to repeat as the champs of the American Athletic Conference. The Bearcats went unbeaten in the regular season last year but lost to Georgia in the Peach Bowl. It’s interesting that they make the top ten when you consider that UCF, also from the AAC, ran the table in 2017 capped off by a win over Auburn in the Peach Bowl and started out 2018 ranked 23rd in the Coaches Poll. The Bearcats have the best quarterback you may have never heard of in Desmond Ridder, but they have to find three new O-line starters and three on the D-line. They play Indiana and Notre Dame back-to-back on the road and UCF is the toughest conference game. There are losses on that schedule. Cincinnati will be good, but right now should be in the overrated category.
Those are the teams ahead of the Gators in the Coaches Poll. If you examine all ten of them, it’s not all that difficult to make a case that Sporting News might very well have the Gators pegged exactly where they ought to be. The Gators have flaws, for sure. They’re replacing three of the most productive players in all of college football last season in quarterback Kyle Trask (4,283 passing yards, 43 TDPs), Mackey Award All-Intergalactic tight end Kyle Pitts (43-770, 12 TDs) and All-American wide receiver Kadarius Toney (70-984, 10 TDs), and last year’s defense was the worst in school history, which has everything to do with why Phil Steele ranks the Gators outside the top 25. Still, there is no shortage of returning talent. Mullen is a proven quarterback whisperer and offensive schemer and the defense just can’t be as bad as it was last year.
Despite losing Trask, Pitts and Toney to the No Fun League, most of the experts agree that Florida will have a very good offense. Perhaps it won’t be as explosive in the passing game as it was the past two years, but Mullen has a quarterback with gifted feet, the most loaded running backs room he’s had since he began calling plays for Urban Meyer way back when, and an offensive line that has more starting experience than either of the past two seasons and the belief that there is something to prove.
Emory Jones is the replacement for Trask and while experts agree unanimously that Mullen is one of the more gifted quarterback coaches in the collegiate game, the knock is that Jones has never started a college football game. The critics seem to overlook the fact that Jones was a 4-star QB in high school who was committed to Ohio State prior to Mullen becoming the Florida football coach in December of 2017. Now in his fourth year at UF, Jones knows the offensive system through and through, plus he’s played significant snaps in some of the biggest games against highly ranked teams. One other thing the critics forget is that Kyle Trask hadn’t started a game since his 9th-grade year in Manvel, Texas before he took over for injured Feleipe Franks in 2019. That worked out fairly well.
Mullen has the same kind of confidence in Jones that he had when he sent Trask into the game cold off the bench to replace Franks at the start of the fourth quarter against Kentucky in 2019. All Trask did was rally the Gators from down 11 to a 29-21 win.
“I had a lot of confidence in Kyle when we put him in the game, but he was going into a situation I have not seen him in a ton, and how he was going to handle that and he handled every situation that was thrown at him extremely well,” Mullen said. MY confidence in Emory as a player is extremely high. My confidence with his maturity is very high. Now he’s going to get put in situations we haven’t seen him have to handle.”
Based on what he’s seen in three years from Jones, however, Mullen knows what to expect. Whereas Trask could take a two-yard opening and turn it into a five-yard gain, Jones can see that same opening and he’s 20 yards into the secondary before anyone has a shot at catching up with him. What nobody has seen enough of is Jones going through progressions, making the right decision and then throwing the ball where it’s supposed to go.
Mullen has, however, and he knows he’s got a quarterback who can be a nightmare for whom defensive coordinators must game plan.
“I guess the first thing with him is seeing a guy where the ball just jumps off his hand and a guy that has the ability to improvise,” Mullen said.
Because Jones runs so well, the option comes back into play. Trask ran out of necessity more often than not. Jones will run by design and he’s got Dameon Pierce, Malik Davis, Nay’Quan Wright, Lorenzo Lingard and Demarkcus Bowman to pitch it to. When teams focus too much on the run, Jones has talented receivers like Justin Shorter, Jacob Copeland, Xzavier Henderson, Trent Whittemore and tight end Kemore Gamble to throw it to.
If there is a problem it might be there is only one football to go around but that will only bring out the creativity in Mullen’s fertile offensive mind. More talented players on the field mean more problems for opposing defensive coordinators. A highlight of how his mind works to create mismatches, Mullen has hinted very strongly that the Gators are going to be using two running backs on the field.
“I wouldn’t be shocked to see us with multiple running back packages this year with more than one running back on the field at a time a little bit more than we’ve done maybe in the past,” Mullen said.
It probably won’t be the traditional two running back set but instead will utilize one in the slot and one in the backfield. Just ask Georgia if Mullen knows how to incorporate a running back into the passing game.
The past two seasons, the Gators have been among the most inexperienced in the country along the offensive line but this season there are five with starting experience and backups who have been in the system for two or more years. More important, because there was spring football and an offseason strength and conditioning program, Stewart Reese believes the Gators will be able to run the ball more consistently this year because they will be more physical and in better condition than last year.
“Physicality is going to be a big part of the season this year,” Reese said. “Like I said before, having Emory back there and having the running backs from last year, we’re going to be able to do a lot more damage from the run game.”
Reese (6-6, 345) ended the spring as the starting center, flanked by Ethan White (6-5, 319) and Josh Braun (6-6, 352) at the guards with Richard Gouraige (6-5, 313) and Jean Delance (6-5, 307) at the tackles. There is some flexibility with Reese able to play and having started the other four spots on the line in his collegiate career and Kingsley Eguakun (6-4, 303) a smart, physical guy who can take over at center.
There are plenty of theories about the demise of the defense last year, which dipped from 9th nationally in 2019 to 83rd in 2020. Linebacker Jeremiah Moon, back for a sixth season, believes that spring football and offseason conditioning are going to make a huge difference in the Gators making a comeback to playing stout defense once again. The Gators missed out on spring practice in 2020 and there was no offseason conditioning.
“I definitely missed everybody during quarantine [in 2020],” Moon said. “I know we couldn’t really be together, but I would say both mentally and physically played a big role. Obviously, the mental part, you have your guys pushing you ever rep. Then the physical part. I know everybody went off and did what they wanted to do.”
The structure and discipline from the spring seems to have carried over during the offseason. Attitudes are good. Expectations are high again.
Moon believes the days of Florida playing soft like they did last year have come and gone, replaced by a team with something to prove.
“I think we’re going to be nasty,” he said.
Another reason the Gators might belong in the top 10 is the talented transfers they’ve added who will be blending in with returning starters like Zachary Carter, Ventrell Miller, Mohamoud Diabate, Brenton Cox Jr., Kaiir Elam and Trey Dean. Florida has two experienced tackles with size and the ability to both stuff the run and pressure up the gut in Penn State transfer Antonio Valentino (6-3, 312) and Daquan Newkirk (6-3, 308). Juco transfer Diwun Black is versatile enough to play any of the linebacker spots or even as the STAR, which is a hybrid safety/linebacker. Corner Jaydon Hill went down with an ACL, but the Gators have experienced replacements in transfers Jedarrius Perkins (Missouri) and Elijah Blades (Texas A&M).
The distance that separates the Gators from the bulk of the teams ranked ahead of them in the Coaches Poll isn’t all that great. In fact, a case could be made that Florida is in far better shape than three or four of the higher-ranked teams. On paper there might be a gap between Florida’s talent and that of the top five teams, but that doesn’t take into consideration that more than 90 percent of the Florida roster is made up of players Mullen specifically recruited for his system. He is no longer blending in guys he recruited with guys left behind by the previous regime and he is quite comfortable with the guys he will send out to play.
Finally, there is the scheduling factor. Circle three games on the UF calendar: Alabama on September 18, (at) LSU October 16 and Georgia in Jacksonville October 30. As long as one of them is Georgia, if the Gators win two of those three games there is every good chance they will make a return to Atlanta for the SEC Championship Game. Playing at Kentucky on October 2 and home against Florida State on November 27 could present some problems, but the Gators should be favored by 7-10 points at least in both games.
So, underrated? Yeah, you could say Phil Steele seriously underrates the Gators. For someone who claims to be the king of the preseason magazines, he seems to have missed the mark on the Gators by a substantial margin, assumptions largely based on the departed offensive firepower that will play for pay on Sundays this fall and last year’s disaster of a defense. The offense is going to be different but it will not lack for firepower or the ability to put points on the board. The defense is going to be a surprise for Mr. Steele and everyone who grew accustomed to the Gators giving up one big play after another last year.
Overrated? It’s hard to say Sporting News is wrong to place the Gators at No. 8. Given a schedule that presents only three true challenges and talent that is superior to some of the higher-ranked teams, No. 8 would seem to be a reasonable place.
About right? Mullen probably wouldn’t argue that point. If anything, he can use Florida starting the season outside the top 10 as a reason to put a huge chip on the shoulder of the Gators. It’s hard to make up substantial ground on higher ranked teams if you start too far out – see Auburn 2004, which went unbeaten but didn’t get a chance to play for the national championship after starting the season at No. 18 in the polls – but if you’re within striking distance of the top 10 and you have Alabama at home in game three, then UF could go from a team on the fringe to legitimate contender before the 2021 season hits October.
“Our focus is always on worrying about all the things we can control and things that – don’t worry about the things that we can’t control,” Mullen said.
The Gators don’t control where the experts have them ranked right now. What they can control is where they will be ranked once the season begins and winning is the cure-all for that.
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