Florida Gators Season Preview and Predictions
- Ryan McCormick
- Aug 8, 2018
- 3 min read
The Florida Gators head into the 2018 looking to rebound from one of their worst seasons in 30 years. Lead by new head coach Dan Mullen the Gators look to rebound to where they were the 2 years prior atop the SEC East. Florida is one of those schools where they always have talent and will always have top players, the struggle over the past few years has been using those players to their full potential.
The main struggle for the gators since the departure of Tim Tebow and the glory days of the Gators football program has been the offense. Over the past few years the Gators defense has been the thing that has kept them in most games and the defense this year will need to be one of the best in the nation if the Gators want a chance at winning the SEC East again. The Gators defense will be lead by an impressive front seven including potential first round picks Cece Jefferson at DE and David Reese at MLB. The Gators also look to be much better in the secondary with sophomore corners CJ Henderson JR and Marco Wilson looking to improve on impressive freshman seasons. The Gators will once again have one of the most talented defenses in the SEC but the downfall of the defense a year ago was the offenses inability to stay on the field very long forcing the defense to get worn down.
The offense will not likely be fixed immediately even though Dan Mullen was brought in to hopefully fix the quarterback struggles. Mullen has helped quarterbacks like Tim Tebow, Dak Prescott, and Nick Fitzgerald reach the top of the nation and with two raw but talented quarterbacks at Florida in Felipe Franks and Emory Jones the Gators are hopeful that he can work his magic on one of those guys. The strength of the Gators offense this year will be the running game with veteran backs, Jordan Scarlett, and LeMical Perine leading the way. Another key for the Gators offense will be playmaker Kadarius Toney who as you can see from the video below will be used all over the play and has the ability to be a game changer.
The Gators will no doubtably have the talent to hang with most teams in the SEC but it will be interesting to see how much of a jump the offense can make in first year under Dan Mullen. If the Gators offense can play to its potential the Gators could threaten Georgia for the SEC east title but in my opinion they still have some work today and will be at least a year away.
I think the Gators will be much improved from a year ago but that wont be hard to do, below is my prediction of which games the Gators will win and lose.
Win - vs. Charleston Southern
Win - vs. Kentucky
Win - vs. Colorado State
Win - at. Tennessee
Loss - at. Mississippi State
Loss - vs. LSU
Win - at. Vanderbilt
Loss - at. Georgia (Neutral Site)
Win - vs. Missouri
Loss - vs. South Carolina
Win - vs. Idaho
Loss - at. Florida State
I think 7 wins will be a good mark for the Gators to shoot for. Honestly Georgia is probably the only team that will be significantly better than the Gators, they do have the benefit of having LSU and South Carolina at home and if the Gators can figure out the offense 9 or 10 wins won't be out of the question.
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