Florida Football: 5 bold predictions for the 2017 season

After an eventful offseason, Florida football opens the 2017 season on Sept. 2nd against Michigan. Here are five bold predictions for the Gators’ campaign.

The Florida Gators have had one of the more eventful offseasons in all of college football.

From a much publicized quarterback competition between Notre Dame transfer Malik Zaire and redshirt freshman Feleipe Franks, to a mass exodus of talent to the NFL from the team’s secondary, to a bizarre case of eight players placing improper charges on their university student IDs, it’s been an interesting summer in Gainesville.

The Gators are coming off a season which they finished 9-4 and won the SEC East for the second season in a row under second-year head coach Jim McElwain.

However, this season the SEC East could be a whole lot tougher.

Kirby Smart has been building an incredibly formidable program at Georgia, which is currently ranked the No. 15 team in the nation by the AP Poll.

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If the No. 17-ranked Florida Gators are to have any chance of holding off the surging Bulldogs, they will need to take the next step under coach McElwain and finally deliver a balanced attack on both sides of the ball.

McElwain is known as an offensive-minded head coach, but thus far in his Gainesville tenure, the Gators have relied on their stout defense to keep the team in games while the offense largely failed to find consistency.

However, this may be the season where Florida’s offense becomes something to be feared, after an influx of new, hungry talent.

With that in mind, here are five bold predictions for the Florida Gators’ 2017 season.