Flashback and Comparison: 2017 Florida vs Michigan and 2024 Florida vs Miami

[Escambia94]

The Gator faithful have endured some awful football seasons in recent years, yet we have rebounded. This 2024 season is starting to feel like 2017. Let us start with a loss to Michigan at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Here is the box score:

	11 Michigan	17 Florida
Score	33	17
1st Downs	19	9
3rd down efficiency	6-18	2-13
4th down efficiency	1-1	1-2
Total Yards	433	192
Passing	218	181
Comp-Att	12-26	14-26
Yards per pass	8.4	7.0
Interceptions thrown	2	0
Rushing	215	11
Rushing Attempts	49	27
Yards per rush	4.4	0.4
Penalties	7-55	5-45
Turnovers	2	3
Fumbles lost	0	3
Interceptions thrown	2	0
Possession	34:13	25:47

The results against Michigan in 2017 and against Miami in 2024 are somewhat similar, except the latter happened at home and the former involved both teams being ranked.

	19 Miami	Florida
Score	41	17
1st Downs	25	17
3rd down efficiency	5-10	1-9
4th down efficiency	0-0	1-2
Total Yards	529	261
Passing	385	122
Comp-Att	26-36	14-26
Yards per pass	10.7	4.7
Interceptions thrown	1	2
Rushing	144	139
Rushing Attempts	33	28
Yards per rush	4.4	5.0
Penalties	2-26	2-25
Turnovers	1	2
Fumbles lost	0	0
Interceptions thrown	1	2
Possession	34:30	25:30

The 2017 Gators finished 4-7 overall, 3-5 in the SEC. The 2024 Gators will need some midseason overhauls to reach that mark. Vegas has the Gators at 4 wins, with safe money on the under. The 2017 team was more talented and had 5 players drafted. Before the opening game debacle the Gators had at most 2 draft worthy players, and that number might go to 0 by season’s end. Even the woeful 1979 Gators had 6 NFL players.

Buckle up. This season is only going to get worse after the Samson game in week 2.

 

[DRU2012]

The Gator faithful have endured some awful football seasons in recent years, yet we have rebounded. This 2024 season is starting to feel like 2017. Let us start with a loss to Michigan at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Here is the box score:

	11 Michigan	17 Florida
Score	33	17
1st Downs	19	9
3rd down efficiency	6-18	2-13
4th down efficiency	1-1	1-2
Total Yards	433	192
Passing	218	181
Comp-Att	12-26	14-26
Yards per pass	8.4	7.0
Interceptions thrown	2	0
Rushing	215	11
Rushing Attempts	49	27
Yards per rush	4.4	0.4
Penalties	7-55	5-45
Turnovers	2	3
Fumbles lost	0	3
Interceptions thrown	2	0
Possession	34:13	25:47

The results against Michigan in 2017 and against Miami in 2024 are somewhat similar, except the latter happened at home and the former involved both teams being ranked.

	19 Miami	Florida
Score	41	17
1st Downs	25	17
3rd down efficiency	5-10	1-9
4th down efficiency	0-0	1-2
Total Yards	529	261
Passing	385	122
Comp-Att	26-36	14-26
Yards per pass	10.7	4.7
Interceptions thrown	1	2
Rushing	144	139
Rushing Attempts	33	28
Yards per rush	4.4	5.0
Penalties	2-26	2-25
Turnovers	1	2
Fumbles lost	0	0
Interceptions thrown	1	2
Possession	34:30	25:30

The 2017 Gators finished 4-7 overall, 3-5 in the SEC. The 2024 Gators will need some midseason overhauls to reach that mark. Vegas has the Gators at 4 wins, with safe money on the under. The 2017 team was more talented and had 5 players drafted. Before the opening game debacle the Gators had at most 2 draft worthy players, and that number might go to 0 by season’s end. Even the woeful 1979 Gators had 6 NFL players.

Buckle up. This season is only going to get worse after the Samson game in week 2.

Difficult having to face the stark realities that E-- has so clearly outlined through the above comparison, but there it all is.
It certainly appears that as currently coached, while sprinkled with some stand out talent, this Gator team is likely LESS a competitive threat than objectively estimated even by the cold analysis of the betting public.
For me, this is a cold reality. It seems as if I have witnessed a long, sadly hopeless circle of futility over the course of my adult life. A lifelong Gator fan, as a young man child I got to UF in time to witness Doug Dickey's last season as our Coach, then the much-balihooed arrival of Bear Bryant protégé Charlie Pell for the 1979 season, his first as our new Head Coach. It was my sophomore year, and the historically WORST in Gator football history: We did not win a game.
"0-10-and-1"...or, as the joke went. "How'd your team do last season?" "Oh, ten and one..."
And as students bent on having fun in a time and place when G-ville was a rollicking good time of rocking the local clubs'n'pubs, weekend runs to Daytona, and the stories of supposedly "getting high by standing downwind of Florida Field on Saturdays and taking a deep breath to get a buzz from the strong smell of "Gainesville Green" Sensimilla...I don't know about THAT, but I CAN tell you that we still packed out the student section of (what in those days was still the open-ended) Florida Field (not yet "The Swamp", so named by SS upon his eventual return some years later), where we managed to have a great old time each home Saturday by NOT hardly paying ANY attention to what was going on down on the field. The alumni drank their Chivas on THEIR side, and WE drank, smoked and plucked pretty young girls from their near-field seats and passed them up over our heads and eventually up to the "nosebleeds", among other sophomoric pursuits.
As we quickly began to improve the next few seasons under Pell, we hailed the TEAM but bemoaned our innocence lost: Among ourselves we admitted that the games, where we now rooted wildly and actually CARED about the outcome, were never as much PURE FUN again!
I don't know if things will ever sink to such lows once more, or that having gone through all we've seen since, that we could ever adapt in the way we once did back then: We EXPECT to be winners once more again now!
But from an overall performance/ongoing futility P.O.V., it DOES feel as though we have somehow, over the ensuing 45 years, come around to this: We now somehow threaten to perhaps damn near match that 1979's pending record of futility. After Samford, I have a hard time envisioning a lot of wins from the team we saw out there yesterday, or beating a whole lot of the other teams in the SEC, for THAT matter, to be honest--INCLUDING Vandy.

 

[Leakfan12]

Michigan was coming off an Orange Bowl Appearance, The U was coming off a 7-6 season. Michigan was one thing but the U is another.

 

[DRU2012]

Michigan was coming off an Orange Bowl Appearance, The U was coming off a 7-6 season. Michigan was one thing but the U is another.

You sure got THAT right, Lf...
MIAMI was gonna be a "match-up well or ELSE" situation to start with, no matter WHAT!
When you factor in all the historic, geographic, situational and inescapably EMOTIONAL factors that clearly existed and were building further as the actual GAME APPROACHED, all of that (somewhat inevitably) only intensified as the actual GAME APPROACHED. No further "hyping" of the surrounding hoopla was necessary.
One can only step back now and wonder:
"WHERE DID THAT COLLOSAL CHOKE (on OUR part) COME FROM??!"
And "CHOKE" (among MANY matching descriptors) it certainly was. Time and distance ain't likely to lend much in the way of subsequent "perspective" either.
The remainder of the schedule and whatever we (or anyone ELSE) now proceeds to MAKE of it can only serve to somehow highlight further revelatory DETAIL as to how bad we really are, how far we have sank and how long (or even LIKELY) the possibility of our "coming BACK" will even BE...
For MY part, at this point I am not even EXPECTING much in the way of "pending bounce back" effect for the rest of THIS season at ALL.
More like simply answering "How BAD this team and program really IS???"
Because that must be assessed: How deep and thorough is THE ROT that seemed on display? There sure seems that there's a lot of work still ahead; even more then we THOUGHT from the opening kick off, and throughout every moment and observable effort and competence throughout the whole of each ensuing play???
There are people up in the box, on the sidelines and in the "film room" who are paid largish sums to see and evaluate just THAT STUFF.
WELL, WE have got Escambia, and HE is watching the same "stuff"--and (to some degree anyway) "WATCHING THEM" as well!--and I will trust HIS eventual examination and conclusions as to where we are AT by the time we face Samford, and how it is all somehow applied (or at least DAMN WELL OUGHT TO BE) by the time we line up against them NEXT week--Well, if Billy's boys half-ass it a SECOND TIME and WE WILL ALL BE PRETTY DAMN VOCAL ABOUT IT, AGREED???
In fact, while "CREAMING them" won't amount to a great deal, but it will be a "minimal expectation" at THIS point. (I'd PREFER to see us "do it with class" though, at the very least: Bust out early, then sub freely and control a big lead (similar to our end of the first week's game) in the 2nd half--WITHOUT the mocking demonstrations from the home team coming in with the LOPSIDED EXPECTATIONS.
Long as their kids play hard, hold their own early and the guys on the FIELD play with poise and pride, you give them their due and play it "straight Up". Their people scheduled this one for the big paycheck--give the players some encouraging respect and basic props, get what we can from "the work" in scrimmaging with them, shake hands and help 'em UP at the end--of the plays AND the GAME."

 

[DRU2012]

But above all, understand THIS:
THE Gator squad I witnessed (on display nationally in THE SWAMP!) on Saturday was QUITE capable of coming out
and LOSING to ANYONE...
We come out in another "I'm not FEELING it"- frame-of-mind again and TRUST ME: This season could get away in a completely disastrous fashion.
We are flirting with that very THING now--dancing on the edge of a precipice! These are just KIDS, in the final analysis. All the money may obscure that truth--but does NOT change or erase it.
The best WE can do now is at least TRY to ease the pressure OFF, unrealistic as that idea may in fact be. Let 'em PLAY.
This is FAR from the ideal way to introduce a 5-star potential "Future of the Gator Offense" true-freshman QB to play in the SEC, having to start in place of the veteran QB-1 in the season's 2nd gane due to the starters's serious injury, but there it is: One more cursed curveball.
We must endeavor to MINIMIZE THE RISK OF MESSING HIM UP--Find ways of keeping him safe while confidence and experience grow (him with the offense, and the offense with HIM).
Far from ideal circumstances, and yet not without alternatives out there to begin with, either.
Wouldn't it be nice to have a brilliant young O.C. out there working with him NOW, eh Billy?