There’s no denying it now. The Gators aren’t very good.
Gone is the swagger the team carried last year. Instead, there is crippling uncertainty on both sides of the ball.
This is about more than three losses through its first seven games. It’s about an attitude adjustment needed in Gainesville.
It’s time to get mean.
Missouri pushed Florida around on Saturday. The Gators’ offense was inept, as coach Will Muschamp described. The defense looked like it was still wrought with jet lag. It was embarrassing. This season has been embarrassing.
Florida is supposed to be one of the top programs in the Southeastern Conference — if not the country. It’s muddling in mediocrity.
Season-ending injuries to four key starters and seven former starters on defense gone to the NFL isn’t an excuse.
Ask the players and coaches themselves. The “man down, man up,” mantra is on a never-ending loop throughout the football complex.
Look at the past five recruiting classes, which brought in freshmen like Vernon Hargreaves III. Redshirt seniors like Jon Harrison anchor its 2009 group. Florida is ranked in the top 15 for all of them. Its two-deep would start on most teams throughout the country. Heck, most of its roster could start on Missouri.
So where has Florida gone wrong this season?
Offensively, the creativity isn’t there. The Gators are predictable.
Score just enough and let their defense keep them in the game has been their philosophy.
Maybe that has something to do with junior Jeff Driskel suffering a fractured right fibula on Sept. 21, but he hadn’t made the progress everyone expected in his second season as starter.
A Trey Burton direct snap here, a two-yard run there; the Gators just haven’t been giving Driskel’s replacement, redshirt junior Tyler Murphy, doable third-down opportunities.
Florida had 5 or more yards to go on 12 of its 15 third-down opportunities on Saturday and converted only three of them.
Defensively, the once invincible unit now seems ordinary against the run. Missouri racked up 500 total yards on offense, including 205 on the ground.
Dating back to Arkansas on Oct. 5, opponents have averaged 164 yards per game.
Defensive tackle Dominique Easley missing the remaining nine games of the season hurt, but it was by no means a death sentence.
Somebody has to take the blame for this season besides the unrelenting football gods.
How does Driskel, the nation’s No. 1 quarterback recruit in 2011, not take a major leap forward this season? How does a team with the No. 4 defense in America not play better? How is senior Solomon Patton the only playmaking receiver on a team that can get pretty much any high school receiver it wants in the country? How is scoring 21 points per game still acceptable?
These past two decades have been a renaissance for Florida football. If you think this is bad, try reading about the Gators’ history before Steve Spurrier’s head coaching tenure in the early 90s. It isn’t pretty.
With most UF undergraduates never associating Gators football with mediocrity, nobody cares about what seems like ancient history.
I’m pretty sure the 17-and-18-year-old high school football players who will be on campus soon don’t care about it either.
It may be a relatively recent tradition of success, but it’s time the Gators tap into that again.
If not, Florida will start a new reputation about its program that could impact the quality of the players it brings in.
Florida used to be sexy. Now it’s downright ugly.
Follow Adam Pincus on Twitter @adamDpincus.
Florida coach Will Muschamp gazes at the Missouri crowd and reflects after the No. 22 Gators' 36-17 loss to the No. 14 Tigers on Oct. 19 in Faurot Field in Columbia, Mo.
Missouri running back Henry Josey runs the ball during Florida’s 36-17 loss against Missouri on Saturday at Faurot Field in Columbia, Mo. Josey tallied 136 yards and one touchdown against the Gators.
