8-4 isn't an unfair standard to hold Florida Football and Billy Napier to in 2024

Everyone knows that Florida football has a brutal schedule for the 2024 season. Every single entity who writes about college football has commented on the difficulty, and we here at Hail Florida Hail have certainly written our fair share of just how hard the Gators are going to have it this season. 

But the brutality and nonstop gauntlet of opponents don’t shield Florida and Billy Napier from expectations this season. And even though it’s a daunting task ahead of them, it is still fair to set a checkpoint of where this program is supposed to be by year three of the Napier era.

Florida Football: No Rest For The Weary

The Kelley Ford Power Index tweeted out last week an interesting perspective on just how hard Florida's schedule is for this season. They compared Florida's schedule with everyone else in the country and came up with what the 12th-best team would reasonably expect to win, given that schedule.

According to the metrics, even the 12th-best team in the country would struggle to go 7-5 with Florida's schedule.

So, in one breath, a 7-5 for Florida this year could be defined as a success. However, we would look at a 7-5 season and say Billy Napier doesn’t have Florida where it was supposed to be by year three of his tenure.

For as many headaches as Dan Mullen caused, he still put together top 10 seasons in 2018, 2019, and 2020. He was let go, among other reasons, because his recruiting was never at a high enough level that was ever going to get the Gators over the hump. Napier was brought in so Florida could eventually take a step forward, not two permanent steps back.

And yes, Napier has had to clean house of all of Mullen’s leftovers. But we’re now in year three, and he has a roster constructed almost exclusively of his own guys. By year three, anything short of 8-4 means Billy Napier doesn’t have the Gators as a top-10 program.

Returning to Florida’s schedule, let’s pretend Florida was the 8th best team in the country. Outside of maybe Tennessee, is there anyone Florida plays in their first seven games where the 8th-ranked team would be the underdog? So let’s pretend, for argument's sake, that the 8th-ranked team goes 6-1 in that stretch.

Then there is the back end of the schedule, which might be one of the craziest stretches in college football history. It still isn’t unreasonable to say the 8th-ranked team could go 2-3 in that stretch.

Add 6-1 and 2-3 together, and you get 8-4. 

Obtainable for this particular Gator team? It's possible, but getting there would take massive improvement.

Unfair to state it is something Napier should achieve by year three? No, because Napier was hired to make Florida a top-10 team and beyond.