Once upon a time, it wasn't even a question as to whether the Florida Gators would have beaten the Kentucky Wildcats in a game of football. The ball would have been snaped, the disparity would have been obvious, and the Gators would have won without drama.
Quite frankly, in the wake of Florida taking Georgia to the wire, one would have thought the Gators should have left Lexington with a rockfight win.
But seemingly no one from Florida seemed to understand that beating Kentucky is the norm and not the miracle, as the Gators fell in a blowout that is going to leave scars for years to come.
Florida gets blown out by Kentucky
Typically, we here at Hail Florida Hail try to do a deep dive on what went wrong in the wake of a loss, but even we are out of logical answers beyond the fact that everyone has given up.
DJ Lagway looked like a JV backup who was such a liability that Billy Gonzales was forced to pull the plug, even if it didn't make any actual difference in the end result.
Tramell Jones came in and led Florida to the same inevitability that would have happened if Lagway was kept in.
As much as we have tried to defend Lagway as being a byproduct of a Billy Napier-led offense, there is zero defending what happened on Saturday in Lexington. His NIL deal is the only reason why he got the leash to throw three interceptions before Jones was put in.
Mind you, a defensive unit that was largely intact from the Georgia game also got shredded, and it looked like it had zero interest in winning in Lexington.
The simple reality is that Florida has too much talent on its roster to get blown out by Kentucky by over 30 points. And whether that's a Billy Gonzales, Billy Napier, or Ron Roberts problem, there is zero excuse to have what happened in Lexington happen.
But this is the landscape that Scott Stricklin created and has to live with.