Florida football: Ranking Florida’s 2022 Opponents

This Saturday the Florida Gators will open their 2022 season in a prime-time showdown inside the Swamp against no. 7 Utah.

Despite playing in front of a sold-out home crowd, the Gators still find themselves as a 2.5-point underdog against the reigning PAC-12 champions.

While Utah has its eyes set on repeating as conference champions and sneaking their way into the college football playoffs, the Gators are set to redeem themselves from last year under new head coach Billy Napier.

After having national championship aspirations this time one year ago, Florida is now under its sixth new head coach in the past 20 years after the Gators went 2-5 to end the season.

Though the Gators football program appears to be in great hands off the field under the care of Napier and his army of assistants, it’s ultimately the results on the field that matter most.

The Gators certainly will not get much reprieve from this year’s schedule either, as they are slated to play against five teams currently ranked in the preseason top 25.

We previously rated each of Florida’s opponents this season in terms of difficulty. Though the expectations should be somewhat tempered for this year’s team, especially given that Vegas oddsmakers have the Gators listed as winning 7.5 games this season, there will still be many in the Gator Nation that believes this year’s goal should be to return to the SEC Championship game in Atlanta.

While those are lofty expectations, it does raise an important question: what games would be most valuable for this Florida team to win this season?

Before Florida and Utah kick off on Saturday night, we are going to rank all 12 of Florida’s regular season games in terms of which would be most beneficial to win. Along with ranking these games, we will also be giving a metric score on a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being of minimal value and 10 being of vital importance.

Let’s begin!