Florida Football: Early 2023 projections for Gators are a mixed bag

We are now entering the portion of the college football season where the excitement of signing day has waned and the chaos of the transfer portal has settled. Now that the dust is slowly settling on what the roster for Florida football will look like in 2023, sites are slowly starting to trot out their predictions for the Florida Gators.

No one is predicting a top-25 squad for Florida yet, which is fair, but one source seems to think the bottom will fall out in 2023.

Florida Football: The sky is falling

Everyone’s favorite Twitter troll Big Game Boomer put out a list last week that predicted where teams would finish within the SEC. To the surprise of no one that follows his account, Florida football was predicted to finish dead last in the SEC East.

There is a lot to dissect from this list, namely the assertion that South Carolina is going to finish second in the east. But let’s address the notion that the Florida Gators will finish dead last in the east.

It seems absurd, but Florida did finish 5th last year. Florida lost to Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Vanderbilt. And if you believe that Florida will be worse this year than last, it might not be the most absurd prediction in the world that doomsday will strike Gainesville.

But as Athlon Sports points out, the Gators will still have a more talented roster than Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, and Vanderbilt heading into the 2023 season and talent wise are basically tied with Tennessee.

Even College Football News, which don’t have much faith in Graham Mertz, still have the Gators ranked ahead of Vanderbilt, Missouri and Kentucky out of the east. 

And as the roster shapes up for Florida, there is reason to believe that Billy Napier can put together a squad that doesn’t have the drop-off than many seem to think will happen. The Gators should still have a viable running game that alleviates the pressure from Mertz to have to do it all. The defensive side will have a lot of unproven names, but with proper development the talent is on campus to have SEC caliber players.

An SEC caliber defensive coordinator is another question.

Everything for the Gators seems to be pointing to 2024 being the breakout year. That doesn’t mean Napier can neglect the 2023 campaign and a dead last finish in the SEC East would be nothing short of disaster for Florida.

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