Florida Football: Four most overrated opponents on the Gators schedule

The season is fast approaching for Florida football, and national pundits seem to think that the Gators will struggle in 2023 due to their strength of schedule.

As we have pointed out before, Florida has, on paper, the most difficult schedule in all of college football. So even if Florida is improved and is a better team compared to last year’s edition, it may not show up in the win column because of the lack of free wins.

But we here at Hail Florida Hail have four teams on our radar that we don’t think are as good as they are being made to be. Please note that for the purpose of Old Takes Exposed that this doesn’t mean Florida is necessarily going to win, and the Gators could still easily go 4-8 this season, but these are four opponents people seem to think the Gators have no shot against that we think are going to be closer than the experts think.

Florida Football Overrated Opponents: Utah

Let’s set a standard here, going off of the national media. Florida wasn’t very good last season and went 6-7 because their defense was a trainwreck. Combined with the fact that Anthony Richardson is gone, it is easy to see why most people nationally think the Gators have no shot against their opening night opponent.

After all, Utah is the defending soon-to-be Pac-4 champions.

The USA Today Coaches Poll and the AP poll have them ranked 14th in the country, while the Gators are unranked.

ESPN’s FPI has Utah ranked 15th.

And yet, for as terrible as Florida is allegedly going to be, Cesar’s Sportsbook only has Utah as a seven-point favorite.

Combined with the fact that Utah might not have any quarterbacks on August 31 and the fact that Florida beat Utah last year, we would like to think that Billy Napier and crew are going to hang around longer than most anticipate them to.