It’s no secret that the 2024 season hasn’t gone the way Billy Napier wanted it to for a number of reasons.
The team was unprepared and looked bad in a couple of early season contests against Miami and Texas A&M. After the first open date, they appeared to be figuring things out finally. But soon after, injuries started setting in. By the end of the Georgia game, the team was, if not a complete 2013-style shell of itself, certainly depleted enough at enough key positions to have a significantly lowered ceiling of potential.
And yet, despite all that happening during what some were calling the toughest schedule in college football history, the Gators still have a chance at going to a bowl game. Typically, merely making the postseason wouldn’t be the goal for a UF coach in his third year, but for the above reasons and more, that’s where we’re at. I’m not taking space in this piece to litigate all those things (again), but that’s the state of play.
With three games to go, the finale is the most winnable. Florida State somehow made it to mid-November with just a single win to its name. The complete story behind the team’s collapse will make a terrific 30 For 30 film someday. The Seminoles are dead last in the country in points per game, and the bottom may have fallen out completely with last week’s 52-3 drubbing at the hands of Notre Dame. UF should win that game.
However, Florida only has four wins right now. If FSU makes a fifth, it still needs a sixth. The two chances for that are this weekend against LSU and next week against Ole Miss. Both are home games, so there is no venue component to the question of which is the more winnable game.
However, the Tigers and Rebels are headed in opposite directions at the moment.
Ole Miss started out hot against a bunch of bad teams but then hit the skids against tougher competition. They lost to Kentucky, had a 27-3 win over South Carolina that looks better now than it did then, lost to LSU, and then couldn’t truly put away a thoroughly mediocre Oklahoma team. Since then they throttled Arkansas 63-31 and then beat Georgia by a larger quality-of-play margin than the 28-10 final score would indicate.
Meanwhile, LSU did its customary thing of the Brian Kelly era by losing the opener before ripping off six straight wins. The streak includes that win over Ole Miss and less-convincing wins than the Rebels’ victories over South Carolina and Arkansas, among others. Running quarterbacks have destroyed the Tiger defense the past two weeks, between A&M’s Marcel Reed and Alabama’s Jalen Milroe. The result was back-to-back losses by a combined score of 70-36.
Every team is a new team each week in college football, but there would have to be pretty significant reversals for Florida to go loss-win in the next two games. Getting to a bowl is almost certainly contingent on winning tomorrow and then not blowing the FSU game.
Something about the Tigers just doesn’t quite add up. Part of it is that the defense still isn’t totally fixed. To be sure, new DC Blake Baker has made some headway compared to the historically awful defenses of Matt House in the prior two seasons. However, LSU made a strategic choice to not overpay for defensive linemen in the NIL market last winter, and they’re metaphorically paying for it now.
On the other side of the ball, QB Garrett Nussmeier — yes, the son of Doug — is second in the SEC at 318.4 yards per game. He’s only that high in total yards, however, because he chucks it 42 times a game. That’s seven more than the second-place guy, UGA’s Carson Beck. Going off of passing efficiency, Nussmeier falls to tenth among eligible signal callers in the league. Toss out games against FCS opponents and he’s down to 11th. Nussmeier has been LSU’s quarterback of the future for years, but now I’m wondering if he always will be.
UF is still up a creek a bit on defense with its top three corners of Jason Marshall, Devin Moore, and Ja’Keem Jackson out for the game. New to the injury report this week is arguably the team’s best inside linebacker Grayson Howard. I expect to see sophomore Jaden Robinson pick up a lot of those extra snaps given the way he’s come on this year. With Howard being the Gators’ best coverage linebacker, Nussmeier might be able to shake off some of his struggles.
Fortunately, Napier said in his Thursday radio show that both DJ Lagway and Elijhah Badger will play in the game. Lagway is head and shoulders above Yale transfer Aidan Warner, to the point that him playing or not is most of the difference between whether UF has a chance to win or not. It’s too bad Lagway is coming off of a hamstring injury because his mobility would likely give LSU’s defense all kinds of trouble. The wide gulf in the passing ability of the two quarterbacks means that Lagway should stay in the pocket as much as possible, though.
But if something does knock Lagway out again, having Badger back is a huge factor. He has the widest catch radius on the team, and he basically hauls in anything he can touch. The man just doesn’t drop passes. Given Warner’s understandable accuracy issues, having Badger to throw to is a massive bonus.
It would be huge for the program to get to a bowl. With Napier staying around another year per Scott Stricklin’s announcement last week, making a bowl despite the brutal schedule and large attrition would be a positive sign for the coaching staff that they could take to high school and portal recruits. It also means extra practice time, and with a lot of the talent on the team being young, that could be a big help. And plus, there are simply thousands of Gator fans who would like to take that one last trip to see the team play one more time.
Between Lagway’s return and LSU’s defensive line not being very good by its own standards, Florida’s offense has a real chance to score enough to keep the team in the game to the end. Even with the Tigers’ offense having fallen far off from where it’s been most of the last few seasons, they’re not completely dysfunctional and have the players to attack Florida where it’s weakest.
Winning tomorrow doesn’t guarantee a bowl game, because rivalry games can sometimes bring out extra motivation and Lagway’s status is going to be an unknown from here on out. However, losing tomorrow all but closes the door on a postseason bid. It’s critical that Florida finds a way to outscore LSU to avoid staying home for the holidays for a second straight season.