The excitement level heading into the 2023 season might be the lowest I can remember since the 2012 offseason. It probably is lower, actually.
Will Muschamp fulfilled a lot of the negative stereotypes of defensive head coaches in 2011. Not only had he rolled back the then-modern spread option in favor of an older pro-style attack, but he even meddled with OC Charlie Weis’s scheme to remove some of the passing components. The Gators failed to score even 14 points on five occasions, and there were two other games where only non-offensive scores got the team north of that mark.
Muschamp at least brought in new offensive coordinator Brent Pease in 2012 to install “the Boise offense”, something that still had some caché at the time. You know how that turned eventually out, but it gave fans something to hang their hat on. UF also had the tailwind of Urban Meyer’s monster 2010 recruiting class entering its third year and some hope that maybe former 5-star recruit Jeff Driskel might blossom after all that playing time as a freshman. Again, remember we’re talking about offseason expectations leading up to the 2012 season here.
Billy Napier does have the new-opposite-coordinator thing going with Austin Armstrong, and he’s finally building a monster recruiting class. Said monster class can’t do a thing on the field this fall, however, and Armstrong doesn’t even have something like Pease did where he could draft off fourth-year starting QB Kellen Moore being the de facto OC of a terrific 2011 Boise State offense.
Furthermore, Florida has finished two straight seasons with a sub-.500 record. If you can’t remember the last time that happened, there’s a good chance it’s because it happened before you were alive.
UF went 4-7 in Doug Dickey’s final season in 1978 before the infamous 0-10-1 campaign in 1979. I myself wasn’t alive then, but my father has told me countless times about how everyone was disappointed after the team merely tied Georgia Tech in the home opener in Week 2. There probably was a decent amount of excitement around having a new head coach who’d just gone 10-1 at Clemson the prior year.
I’ve discussed elsewhere about how the over/under on Gator wins this fall is 5.5 and how big a regression will be necessary to hit the under. The under on that is not out of the question, however, nor would another 6-6 regular season record with a bowl loss to hit 6-7 for the third straight year.
The probability is much greater that you were not alive for the last time UF had three consecutive sub-.500 finishes. That distinction goes to the squads from 1945-47 that ended up 4-5-1, 0-9, and then 4-5-1 again.
The circumstances couldn’t be more different than now. Florida’s football program had been weakened significantly by students contributing to the country’s World War II effort, which is reasonable since defeating the Axis was infinitely more important than defeating football rivals.
Florida wasn’t exactly a national power in the prewar era, though it did have the country’s highest scoring offense in 1928. However, the Gators had their worst record in a decade at 3-7 in 1942 and couldn’t even field a team in 1943. The 1944 team did manage to finish 4-3, but that mark counts wins over teams from the both the Jacksonville and Mayport naval air stations. The Gators were just 2-3 against actual college football teams, and they were back below .500 at 4-5-1 in 1945 in part to losing a game to a military team called “U.S. Amphibians” in the season finale.
So yeah, the Gators of the present aren’t exactly digging out of a hole resulting from what we all hope was the largest war the world will ever see.
Florida doesn’t have the hope of a former 5-star quarterback recruit going into his second season. It has a pair of transfers who either underperformed expectations or essentially never played at their previous destinations.
Florida doesn’t have a new, experienced coordinator bringing in a new shiny thing. It has a frightfully young new coordinator who is promising to run basically the same thing as the last guy did except better, even though the prior defense made fans at home want to throw their remotes through their TVs.
Florida doesn’t have a blowout past recruiting class rising into its third season. It has the remnants of classes cobbled together by a head coach who didn’t like recruiting plus some promising but small classes from the new staff plus a bunch of transfers.
There aren’t even any new narratives to sell. Napier is the third former Saban assistant in the last four head coaches. All the stories you can build off of that foundation have already been told several times for several different guys.
And though Napier is purported to be one of the closest to Saban in terms of organization and leadership within the coaching tree, he still doesn’t go all the way with it. Though he has lots of input, Saban doesn’t personally run the defense on game days. He reportedly will still do very hands-on teaching in the secondary at practice, but his hired coordinator calls the shots. Napier not only calls plays himself, but he doesn’t have a true offensive coordinator on staff. Rob Sale has that title, but he’s neither a play caller nor a real holistic offensive architect.
I get it. I really do. Excitement for 2023 is low for a reason.
I’ll just direct you once more to the piece about the win total over/under. Forget the conclusion, just read the middle. There is absolutely a realistic path to getting to 7-5 or 8-4 in the regular season, which when combined with the ’24 commitment list should provide some real optimism. It just might take until November or later to feel it.