Can Florida Football live up to blue-chip ratio in 2023?

When 247 Sports put out its annual list of top teams in the blue-chip ratio, Florida football ranked 11th. But will the Gators be a top-15 team in 2023? 

Florida football head coach Billy Napier recently indicated that he believes the Gators are much farther ahead of where they were a season ago.

For his sake, he better be right, because another 6-7 season will have the second-year head coach firmly on the hot seat.

Say what you will about Florida football, but six-win seasons won’t cut it. Napier had a nice win against Utah to open the 2022 season. The rest of the campaign was filled with disappointments.

The Gators were beaten soundly by Oregon State in their bowl game — not exactly what Florida football fans had in mind when he was hired.

However, the talent is there to win. It always has been at Florida. The problem is that star quarterback Anthony Richardson went to the NFL draft. He would have been a great weapon this season for the Gators who are deciding between Graham Mertz and Jack Miller.

Mertz feels like he’ll be the starter. He’s been much-maligned but does have 38 career touchdown passes including 19 last season for Wisconsin in an offense that wasn’t exactly opened up.

The transfer should have better weapons in the passing game too, although you could also make the case that he’ll be facing better defenses in the SEC than he did in the Big Ten. At least faster.

We’ll see how it works out. All I know is that Florida football is ranked 11th in the blue-chip ratio. That’s an annual list put together by 247 Sports. It measures what percentage of recruits over the past four years are blue chips — four or five-star recruits.

According to Bump Elliot, you need to be at a minimum to win a national title (not make the playoff). What’s interesting is that Florida football is ranked 11th overall on the list going into the 2023 eason with a blue-chip ratio of 64 percent.

That’s 10 percentage points higher than Michigan, a team many expect to play for the national championship. That shows the difference a quarterback can make.

It also tells you that this Florida football team could be better than expected. If Mertz can be solid, the Gators have the fifth-most talent of any team in the SEC. The schedule is brutal and that doesn’t help, but Florida football is capable of an 8-9 win season based just on talent alone.

There aren’t many teams that can beat Florida just on talent, even in the SEC, so if Billy Napier can get things figured out, the Gators should exceed expectations.

If not, Napier will be squarely on the hot seat heading into 2024.