The 2024 season for the Florida Gators was a tale of three parts. The Gators were as low as any team in the country could have been three games into the season, treaded water through the middle part, and then caught fire to close out the season.
The new Netflix series SEC Football: Any Given Saturday dedicated an entire episode to Florida. And while the series is billed as a "behind-the-scenes" documentary, the actual end product is one of the most incomplete stories ever told.
Florida Gators get a watered-down version of their 2024 season on Netflix
Episode two of the series is about Florida. It attempted to paint a picture of a quarterback controversy between Graham Mertz and DJ Lagway, and while there was one in real life, the story Netflix told was a stripped-down version with zero actual tension.
Mertz and Lagway come across as genuine guys, and we do get to see some of the recovery effort Mertz had to go through after tearing his ACL. But for an episode titled "QB1," there was minimal plot development given to whether Lagway would have actually started over Mertz had Mertz stayed healthy.
Likewise, the episode acknowledges the early-season struggles and notes that Napier was on the hot seat; however, nothing in the episode is fleshed out.
After the Miami and Texas A&M losses, we get some fake tweets on the screen along the lines of "Napier should be fired," and we get one locker room shot of Napier trying to rally the team together, but beyond that, we get no actual indication of what the genuine frustration level was like at that time.
There is a passing reference to buyout money being raised and Napier is asked directly about that, but it's then off to the next scene as if nothing had happened.
The episode completely skips the Georgia and Texas games, and then goes through the four-game winning streak that defined Florida's season with a four-minute montage.
If you are going to paint the picture that Napier was a dead man walking, then you have to dedicate more time to actually celebrating the success the Gators had to close out the year.
Mind you, none of this was a surprise given how Netflix typically produces its sports documentaries. But if one was hoping for a deep dive and behind-the-scenes footage, this series wasn't that.