What (if anything) DID We Learn?

[DRU2012]

I will refrain from airing my own "positives and negatives" for the moment and instead ask Y'ALL what YOU saw...
MY focus will be on DJ's deficiencies: He missed a BUNCH of throws or we aren't IN a "close one"--we win by at LEAST A COUPLE OF SCORES...Once agsin TERRIBLE 3rd down performance (even WORSE ON 4TH DOWNS!)...and we are ALL sick of this poor offensive production (TRULY "offensive")--and with Napier gone THAT now goes on DJ and the O-line.
If we can keep them, we WILL have those injured receivers back at some point, but our NEXT Coach will HAVE to at least bring in competion and CONSIDER REPLACING DJ as QB-1.the the
He is NOT consistently GETTING IT DONE.
AND if he elects to get surgery some (increasingly MORE) suspect he needs and will HAVE to get at SOME point, that will mean ANOTHER "lost season"...THAT in turn may GUARANTEE his leaving.. HELL, at THIS point perhaps it is ONLY his big NIL package that may be keeping him here NOW.
LOOK: Things are gonna HAVE to change BIGTIME here no matter HOW this Coaching "search" culminates.
For the moment though, the one and ONLY thing I will say we "saw and learned" was that this TEAM generally improved with "Bullshit Billy" gone--but DJ Lagway DID NOT.
We "almost WON" in SPITE of him.
Period. End of line.

 

[Escambia94]

My takeaways:

DJ Lagway is washed. Billy Napier ruined him. To make matters worse, he will probably get another round of surgery in the offseason.

The receivers are good when they are healthy, but for whatever reason we lose one to injury each game.

The defense is okay.

If this team had been better coached since week 1, this team would have a couple more victories.

 

[DRU2012]

(Does anyone ELSE have this image in mind now of Billy Napier sitting SOMEWHERE in a deluxe suite in some exotic locale, sitting on a pile of money and SULKING AWAY??!

 

[DRU2012]

My takeaways:

DJ Lagway is washed. Billy Napier ruined him. To make matters worse, he will probably get another round of surgery in the offseason.

The receivers 5are good when they are healthy, but for whatever reason we lose one to injury each game.

The defense is okay.

If this team had been better coached since week 1, this team would have a couple more victories.

More than “a couple more wins”, I suspect—more like “a few”, but overall I get your point and fully agree.
In fact, that now possibly pending “surgery” MIGHT end up being the sole chance that DJ might eventually be “retrieved and resurrected”—because he DOES appear to have been somehow severely set BACK through general coaching mismanagement. One thing Billy N. WAS a master of was “blowing smoke”—right up our collective buttholes!
I too have been suffering weekly, no YEARLY “terminal hand-wringing” over the constantly mounting injuries, especially to our talented receivers—dropping like FLIES!
Of course, it has (in seemingly typical fashion for this staff’s tendency to miss, overlook or just forget they even HAVE certain talented players who are only “REdiscovered” as a RESULT of all those injuries as each season goes on. Look at what happened yesterday.
Our top 3 WRs all out once Dallas’ season-ended in the 1st quarter (that’s right—we lose our dazzling 5-star just as he is coming into his own, early in the Cocktail Party, having already lost VBIII AND Mizell before THIS game even started.
We all SAW what the “first-blush”, injured, hampered but “unadulterated” DJ was capable of just alone with his raw TALENT even after a shredded HAMSTRING last year.
I’m not sure WHAT the whole story is there, but the one thing we KNOW happened to him is one Billy Napier.
We have a by-all-accounts and evidence “serviceable” former 4-star backup over on the bench in Jones, AND another 5-star (though perhaps not nearly as highly-touted) later-class QB committed if we can keep him (so far word is he’s sticking with that commitment):
SO much depends on who our next Coach turns out to be, clearly…
I frankly just have NO CLUE as to where we’re at OR where we are HEADED.
And after this last game we just gained so little further insight as far as the current team’s state of mind OR intention. It isn’t Billy G’s “fault”, but he AIN’T gonna be “that story” either.
So we are “in limbo”—and will remain there at LEAST until whenever, HOWEVER this whole steeplechase/obstacle course plays out to and AT the Finish Line.

 

[DRU2012]

I found it difficult to watch much of the “usual suspects” online Saturday OR Sunday, but I caught enough and now as more bleeds OVER I am more aware of the mounting reactions to how certain officiating calls in our game, in particular that last “”white-gloved NON-Incompletion” that pretty well killed a very real “Last Chance Rally for the PATCH”…I’m still shaking my head in frustration—yet simultaneously still DO NOT care to get into it:
“IT CHANGES NOTHING NOW!”
What more is there to SAY?
I welcome any of Y’ALL to air YOUR thoughts on the matter—but me, I’m just liable to get angry again…”—“and FOR WHAT?”, I ask myself.
One more in a near-endless procession of “What IF-wannabes” that are all Billy left us, before he took the money and beat tracks outta town?

 

[DRU2012]

…Right at the moment, the CHANT goes…
“It’s TOUGH
To Be
A Florida GATOR…”
YES
“It’s TOUGH
To Be
A Florida Gator…”
Repeat as needed…

 

[DRU2012]

But NO!
I too feel the pain, BUT:
Hey: In my heart of HEARTS:
It is STILL
GREAT
TO BE
A FLORIDA GATOR.
We WILL find our way.
With or without a “That GUY”.
Sooner or LATER.

 

[Escambia94]

It's great to be a Florida Gator. Always.

The University of Florida football program existed for 90 years before it won a national championship, and was fortunate to get two more a decade later. There is more to being a Gator than football championships.

That being said, it would be nice to get football championships like our modern rivals.

 

[Leakfan12]

What are the chances that the UF-FSU game will be the battle to get into a bowl game? If that.

 

[Escambia94]

What are the chances that the UF-FSU game will be the battle to get into a bowl game? If that.

At this point, I doubt either team gets into a bowl game. Even then, FSU has better odds than Florida at this point.

FSU is 4-4 with Clemson, Virginia Tech, NC State, and Florida on its schedule. There are at least two wins there. I predict they go 6-6 at best.

Florida is 3-5 with Kentucky, #6 Ole Miss, #25 Tennessee and FSU on its schedule. I see maybe one win there. Florida could go 5-7 at best.

 

[DRU2012]

What are the chances that the UF-FSU game will be the battle to get into a bowl game? If that.

At this point, I doubt either team gets into a bowl game. Even then, FSU has better odds than Florida at this point.

FSU is 4-4 with Clemson, Virginia Tech, NC State, and Florida on its schedule. There are at least two wins there. I predict they go 6-6 at best.

Florida is 3-5 with Kentucky, #6 Ole Miss, #25 Tennessee and FSU on its schedule. I see maybe one win there. Florida could go 5-7 at best.

I sorta have to at least consider the point Dooley made online in his latest:
My mounting ambivalence has me wondering, “How much does it really matter?”
Are fans all that jazzed about making it to some crap-bowl?
And from a practical point-of-view, how much of a difference do those extra practices etc really mean to the team and program this time?
(As Dooley also asks: How much difference did it make last-season-into-THIS-one?
It probably SHOULD have—but without our QB fully involved “progress” was limited at best…and the recruiting advantages are practically meaningless this time around: Almost EVERYTHING now rests on who the next Coach turns out to be…Sooner would be better than later—but even “when” takes a DISTANT back seat to “WHO” now.)
For “That Guy”, we wait, regardless of all the risks.
Sure, winning is always good…and if we win enough, of COURSE I’ll be glad to have another chance to cheer them on. But the truth is that emotionally speaking I no longer have a whole lot riding in the lead-up to these remaining contests.
Oh, I will no doubt be fully involved once the ball is kicked in EVERY ONE. But things have really come apart from a “big picture” standpoint.
A certain distance has somehow been imposed:
This is the most “removed” I have felt since my sophomore year as an undergrad, when we brought in Charlie Pell and went 0-10-1…Me and gf (later wife) went to every home game, the Cocktail Party—and all but one ROAD GAME too!
And had a BALL, by the way.
Because we just didn’t really CARE: We all caught a buzz and, every now and then, actually focused on what was happening ONFIELD.
That changed dramatically almost “overnight”, between that 1st Pell season and the 2nd (largest numerical season-to-season win/loss improvement in SEC history):
It was a whole different attitude and vibe around team and GAMES the following year, I can tell you THAT!
A whole different scene…We reveled in it—but many (myself included) also noted how it “just wasn’t the same, in a way not as ‘FUN’, actually having to focus and CARE!”…We managed, though—got a whole NEW feeling that just never STOPPED getting bigger and better as the years went on—as, even with scandal and NCAA sanctions, the team and PROGRAM somehow just kept getting “bigger and better” themselves.
So it CAN, damnit WILL, happen AGAIN.
(I just do not know if this will be the moment—only that it IS an OPPORTUNITY.)

 

[Escambia94]

One reason that the system rejected a playoff season for so many years is revenue for the lesser bowl sponsors. The larger bowl sponsors allied themselves with the playoff system because it granted them even more access to bowl revenues while denying the same to lesser bowl sponsors. Net result: none of the non-CFP bowl games matter. The metric of becoming bowl eligible means nothing. That phrase “bowl eligible” is a remnant of times gone by.

 

[DRU2012]

One reason that the system rejected a playoff season for so many years is revenue for the lesser bowl sponsors. The larger bowl sponsors allied themselves with the playoff system because it granted them even more access to bowl revenues while denying the same to lesser bowl sponsors. Net result: none of the non-CFP bowl games matter. The metric of becoming bowl eligible means nothing. That phrase “bowl eligible” is a remnant of times gone by.

Yes...and in THAT light only ADDS to the larger certainty that "something has been lost..."
However, above I am speaking more about how it feels specifically as a Gator fan, specifically here and NOW: While the loss of relevance, excitement, meaning and importance of everything OUTSIDE the CFP now is very real, there are ("normally") still both meaningful emotional attachments AND additional practical advantages, for both team and fans, attached to even the lesser rewards of trips to excited towns throwing a party in their honor, the attention of media (especially on television--in the televised game itself)--and of course whatever benefits accrue as a result in terms of recruiting and (still developing) NIL and Collective opportunities.
There clearly continues to be SOME "meaning and value" there--just little for ME, personally:
Yes, I am definitely and thoroughly guilty of abject sullen selfishness here...MY team's not in it, and as a result of a HOST of unique and isolated factors surrounding THIS program at THIS time, in the middle of wholesale changes occurring ACROSS THE BOARD In ALL of CFB, I myself and certainly many Florida FANS are left with little reason to CARE about the details and implications of how the season plays out from here.
Interestingly, courtesy of those same global changes in college football, the individual PLAYERS (whether for profit or advancement) themselves may well have all kinds of personal reasons--to play AND care.
But at THIS point, as the list of those "injured, unlikely to play" continues to grow, at the same time by the way more and more mirroring the list of "best players on the field so far in 2025", whatever hopes might have outweighed "dwindling expectations" continue to lose whatever power they might have once held.
In short: I still care--but I don't WANT to.
I will watch--and (in spite of myself) will no doubt HURT...knowing all the while that all that TRULY matters now is who we get as our next Coach (and all that comes AFTER, as a result).
A whole other discussion that, one way or another, WILL come...LATER.
But for now...YIKES!!!
I can hardly stand even following the folks on podcasts I normally tend to LIKE.
I wanna know the latest--but clearly they have little more insight as "insiders" and "influencers" than I do! A lesson there for ALL of us, about EVERYTHING, don't y'all THINK?