Florida Football: Benching Feleipe Franks is a colossal mistake

Florida football head coach Jim McElwain is making a colossal mistake. Here are three reasons that benching Feleipe Franks will ruin the Gators’ SEC East hopes.

For whatever the reason, the Florida Gators have not been able to find any semblance of an offense under Jim McElwain. The Gators have been in the bottom third of scoring offense in the SEC since he took helm of the program in 2015. It’s not a quarterback problem, its a McElwain problem. That’s why pulling the plug on one of the most promising young passers in the country is not only a bad decision, it’s irresponsible.

McElwain announced that Luke Del Rio will start against the Vanderbilt Commodores in Week 5. Rather than sticking with young talent that needs playing time to grow or an experienced veteran like Malik Zaire, McElwain has chosen the worst option of his trio of “work-in-progress” passers.

Every college football team has their bread and butter. Florida has and will continue to be built on their defensive prowess. As long as they play in the SEC East, that won’t pose any problems. Florida doesn’t need to score 40 points a game and win with offense. They’re not in the Big 12. Winning with defense can be, and should be the recipe for success in Gainesville.

Franks, Zaire, Del Rio or whichever walk on draws the short straw should be able to dink and dump enough times to make this team competitive. Here are three reasons why benching Feleipe Franks was a momentum-killing blunder by Jim McElwain.