So will A& M, Miami, and Tennessee. We are all fighting to get out of tge middle of the pack. Nobody is going to be flat.
6-7 5-7 8-5 This should never be “results” at Florida. If he can’t break 9-10 in year four with potentially one of the best quarterbacks in the country, he never will. I don’t want to hear anything abt insane schedules either. This league isn’t going to get any easier. It’s always going to be a gauntlet. Get gud or go home. I think we have the horses. I’m going with the dreaded cautiously optimistic outlook for now.
Normally I would agree with you on the upsets, but who would have thought we would take down LSU and Ole Miss back to back after that Tx showing. The difference is the defense showed up and Lagway. The frustrating thing is this you never know what you're going to get with this team. I mean, hell, we were in that UGAG game until DJ went down. If we can take Meeami and aTm in the early part of the season, then look out. Defense needs to be like it was toward the end of the season.
I agree. We have a lot of fans that are willing to settle and make excuses. Not like the Spurrier and Myer years where we asked how many points are we going to win by. Napier is an adult and realizes the stakes. You win or you go home and someone else will be there to try. You don't see UGA or Bamma saying well I hope we can win with our schedule. No, they schedule good competition and meet it. We can get there. We have been there.
FYI....There are 6 Florida games you could bet today with a sports book. UF a 7.5 dog to LSU, 5.5 dog to Miami, 7.5 dog to TX, & 9.5 dog to GA. Gators favored by 2.5 over TN & 10.5 over FSU. So if you think UF is going to have a good year get out your wallets. Go Gators
Two things... 1) Lagway is hardly "one of the best QBs in the country" right now. He may develop into one, and he's certainly flashed potential, but as of the end of last season he was not even in the top 20% IMO. 2) Do you really think schedule plays no part in the final record? That's patently ridiculous... Question- if we swapped places with Ole Miss's schedule last year what's our record? I have 9-3. Does Napier need to do better? Of course... But we actually did pretty well after TAMU last year. Not perfect, but pretty well. Especially considering we had our 2nd or 3rd string QB playing most of that time.
Very reasonable. This is where I am as well... The Miami and TAMU games last year can't happen again, but as I said above, they didn't last year after game 3 except when we had our 3rd string QB...
Distant, Gator Nation is putting tremendous "stock" into DJ being a superstar. Perhaps too much so. While it was clear the team responded to him in a big way, 12 TD's, 9 Int's, 1,915 yards passing and a QBR of 57.9 are hardly overwhelming. His last two games against FSU and Tulane were lackluster. Of course the kid was hurt / banged up and did not have the option of using his legs much. Clearly for UF (or any other team to excel) good to great QB play is a necessity. Numerous things must fall into place for UF to beat the Vegas odds and become a playoff contender. Especially health. But the starting units, almost across the board, seem to be better and deeper than in the past. We shall see.
I see alot of" potential." Many of those need to step up in a big way, especially on defense. There werent really elite offenses in the running last year but the best defenses were the teams left standing.
You are apparently clueless regarding the situation CBN assumed responsibility for, compared to what SOS and Meyer inherited
Agree completely but 2 things can be true at the same time... 1) Napier walked into a mess- probably far worse than any other coach in Florida history going back to 1980. (Pell's perhaps was worse.) 2) Napier has done worse than SOS or Meyer would have done with the same roster. Spurrier/ Meyer can make chicken salad out of chicken poop, so to speak. Napier has not and cannot. He's not that type of coach. So for me- these next 2 years will tell the tale of Napier, but IMO the first 2 are almost irrelevant to his future. If we wanted instant success he was the wrong person for that job.
The thing that gets me about the whining and the petulant demands is that they are patently unjustified in the moment. Refusing to acknowledge that we have made real progress on a number of fronts can be irksome for someone who's been around for a while. BN has built an outstanding roster, and he's done it without a $30M payroll. I for one am good with that, but I do agree that this is a pivotal season and that another stumbling start would not auger well. One last thing; DJ is not a finished product by any means - nor was he completely healthy at any point last season. But IMO, being tentative in any way, shape, form or fashion about his talent or what he means to this program is well beyond a reasonable abundance of caution.
Can’t argue Distant, but here we’re also holding CBN up against 2 of the greatest of all time. Doesn’t it seem just a little unreasonable to make being the equal of SOS and Meyer the bar Billy has to clear in his 3rd year as a P5 head coach - especially given what he got to start with? This whole “10-wins this year or the highway” mentality on this board is ridiculous and also self-destructive
They inherited those situations because they had Napier-like predecessors. Napier needs to improve the team’s results very soon or he’ll become a footnote in Gator Football history like Zook or Hall.
