Tennessee football: 3 reasons the Volunteers will beat Florida in Week 3

2. Florida is in a state of emergency

Long gone are the glory days of Urban Myer’s Tim Tebow-led championship teams. It’s been 15 years since the two legends teamed up to claim the 2008 National Championship and/or SEC Title Double, and there’s no end in sight as to when the Gators will break this title-less drought.

Heck, as of today, the reptiles can’t even be considered contenders to win the SEC East as both the current back-to-back defending national champ and Outdoor Cocktail Party rival Georgia and revived rival Tennessee are viewed as cuts above the Gators within the division.

For many, this realization of underachievement by a program enriched in tradition and immersed amongst the fertile landscape of elite footballing prospects is downright infuriating. Couple those factors with knowing that the school thought it plucked one of the brightest young minds in the sport from Louisiana in Billy Napier, and Gator Nation is left once again scratching its head, wondering what it needs to do to compete at the highest level again.

In Napier’s first season at the helm, the Gators crawled their way to bowl eligibility with a 6-6 regular season record, only to get dissected 30-3 by the Oregon State Beavers in the Las Vegas Bowl. To make matters worse, this mediocre campaign was led by a would soon to be top-five NFL draft pick in Anthony Richardson. Just imagine how much worse the 2022 season could have gone if Florida had not had the workout warrior under center or out of the shotgun.

Well, we don’t have to imagine that scenario any longer, because the nation has already gotten a glimpse of life after AR-15 in Florida’s 2023 season opener at Utah, and it doesn’t look pretty.

The team looked unprepared, turnover-prone, penalty-ridden, and weak at the point of attack.  Needless to say, this is a recipe for future losses, like this weekend against Tennessee.