Florida football: Should the Gators be -18.5 over Vanderbilt?

Florida football will return home this weekend to host the Vanderbilt Commodores after an embarrassing loss on the road to Kentucky.

This is a good bounce-back spot for the Gators, as the Dores will walk into The Swamp at 2-4 after dropping their last four games.

Even with the projected advantages that Florida has over Vandy, it’s a little hard to look at the opening line of -18.5 in favor of Florida and feel confident about the Gators’ side.

Is 18.5 too many points to be favoring Florida?

Florida football: Something’s gotta give

When you look at both Florida and Vandy against the spread this season, it is an ugly, ugly sight.

The Commodores are 0-6 against the spread so far this season, which includes home games against Hawaii and Alabama A&M.

Florida isn’t too much better at 1-4 on the year, with their lone cover being the win over Tennessee in Gainesville a few weeks ago.

So even with as bad as both of these teams have been against the spread, one of them is going to have to cover this weekend. And it’s hard to justify taking either side.

Vandy has gone on the road twice this year and failed to cover by 7.5 points both times. So how can you take them going into Gainesville at 4:00 p.m. and keep it respectable against a Gator team in need of a convincing win?

But if you want Florida, what have you seen in the past two weeks that makes you think they can beat anybody by three scores?

Charlotte kept it within 15 two weeks ago, and Kentucky exposed a lot of weaknesses that the Gators have this weekend.

As I’m writing this, Florida is receiving 53% of the bets. It’s hard to look at the betting data and find a sharp angle.

As the week goes on and we get some more numbers, we’ll have a prediction for you in our betting preview. But this is a scary, scary spread to look at right now.