Florida Football: Studs, duds and thuds from the 2019 season

Florida football has exceeded a ton of expectations this year, but they didn’t live up to the entire hype. What went right and wrong?

The SEC has had an amazing season despite a few teams failing to reach expectations. While other conferences struggle to get teams in the College Football Playoff, the SEC had two teams in contention going into the conference championships. One reason the SEC is so good is because of its depth of quality teams, and Florida football is certainly one of those.

Florida had high hopes going into the year with Feleipe Franks under center, but he failed to live up to the hype at the start of the season. Once he finally got into rhythm, his season came to an unfortunate end due to a devastating injury. Without their starting quarterback, questions were raised as to how the Gators would find a way to achieve all their goals from the season. Thankfully for them, Kyle Trask came in and took over. They weren’t able to achieve all of their goals, but Dan Mullen’s second season as head coach was inevitably a success.

Florida’s defense ended up being a strength, but not for the reasons one would expect. Going into the season, many believed C.J. Henderson would be the best cornerback in college football. He was still really good, but he didn’t quite live up to that mark. Instead, the defense relied on a strong defensive line that dictated what the opposing offense could achieve.

With all of this, what were the studs, duds and thuds from 2019? A stud is something that went well, a dud didn’t live up to the hype, and a thud did not work at all. With that being said, let’s start with some studs.