College Football Playoff: Which Top 25 teams are contenders, pretenders?
After entering the 2017 college football season with the highest hopes for title contention in head coach Jim McElwain’s three year tenure as the Gators’ head coach, Florida has been an absolute mess in 2017.
After luring former Notre Dame quarterback Malik Zaire to the SEC as a graduate transfer this offseason, the team instead award their vacant quarterback position to redshirt freshman Feleipe Franks to incredibly mixed results.
While Franks has led the team in completions, attempts and yards from scrimmage, neither of the team’s three quarterbacks have been able to get much going through the air or on the ground, which helps to explain why McElwain’s squad currently ranks 112th in the nation in total offense.
And on defense Florida has been equally unimpressive. Currently ranked the 82nd best defense in the nation, the Gators have dropped an incredibly 77 spots from their top-five unit in 2016.
After losing their opening game of the season to a ranked Michigan team, and having their second game of the season be cancelled due to the hurricane, Florida defeated a ranked Tennessee squad and a sneaky good University of Kentucky team, but this wins may have asked more questions than they answered.
After Franks exited the team’s Week 4 game midway through the third quarter with his team down by 10 points, Luke Del Rio, the teams third starting quarterback of the season, was inserted into the game and ultimately lead the team to a 28-to-27 victory.
With the team’s 2017 season now firmly engulfed in both a felony fraud investigation of nine of its players, including star receiver Antonio Callaway and running back Jordan Scarlett, and the aftermath of a hurricane that engulfed the entirety of Florida in September, this entire year has felt like a cruel joke for the Gator faithful, eagerly awaiting the return of championship caliber football in Gainesville.