A month ago, I broke some news to Jim McElwain.

The Florida coach was in his happy-go-lucky mood that Wednesday morning. The Gators were fresh off a thrilling 28-27 victory at Kentucky, which came in typical McElwain fashion. The Wildcats forgot to cover a Florida receiver and the Gators scored the go-ahead touchdown to pull out another miracle victory.

That win meant that McElwain improved to 9-1 in one-possession games at Florida. I was interested in hearing his thoughts on his team’s ability to somehow always find a way to prevail, so I shared that stat with him.

“9-1. Wow,” McElwain said that day. “Let’s just keep it at one. How’s that?”

McElwain didn’t keep it at one. Instead, his team lost two straight games by one possession in The Swamp.

That losing streak continued Saturday when his team was demolished 42-7 by Georgia. While all of that pressure mounted, McElwain came out and said that he had received death threats, only to later back off those statements.

That, ultimately, was what allowed Florida to end the McElwain era on Sunday.

But even a month ago, McElwain seemed to see the writing on the wall. He knew that his team had caught plenty of breaks in his three seasons in Gainesville. He knew that those two division titles were hollow and that he had been holding on by a thread. His team could’ve easily been 7-6 each of the past two years.

This year, McElwain’s team will be lucky to get to 7 wins. And as fate would have it, his luck ran out before he could even make that happen.

Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

While McElwain’s supporters continued to point at the positives — Florida was 19-8 with a 13-5 record in SEC play entering 2017 — the negatives piled up in a hurry.

At a place like Florida, it’s never been OK to survive and advance. Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer are the standard, whether McElwain wanted to admit it or not. Whoever replaces him will know that as soon as they walk in the door.

That was always the problem with McElwain. On the field, he could never come close to that bar.

At Florida, he learned that running an offense was a bit more difficult than it was at Alabama, where he had the likes of Eddie Lacy, Trent Richardson and Mark Ingram to hand the ball off to and Julio Jones to throw the ball to. It’s a lot easier to be labeled a guru when you have Heisman Trophy winners and top-five draft picks to work with.

McElwain never got a feel for his personnel at Florida. He could recruit, but just like Will Muschamp before him, he couldn’t recognize which guys to keep and which guys to get rid of.

The Will Grier decision will always haunt McElwain. The fact that his team had to scratch and claw just to get to 17-12 after Grier played his last snap at Florida said a lot about McElwain’s offensive struggles. Grier’s career revival at West Virginia only added to the ammo against McElwain.

Surely Saturday did, as well. Here was Georgia in its second year of the Kirby Smart era with a true freshman quarterback, and the Gators never had a chance. They were embarrassed in every way. The offense that McElwain promised would be much more exciting in 2017 was just more excruciating. It took two elite defenses — Michigan and Georgia — to show just how awful it was.

RELATED: Who should take over at Florida for Jim McElwain?

That’s the toughest thing for Florida fans to swallow. Sure, the credit card fraud suspensions and the other off-the-field stuff brought negative attention to the university, but McElwain failed to accomplish what he set out to do. The Gators did not escape the identity that they had under Muschamp. They didn’t develop into the high-powered offense many expected to see when McElwain came from Colorado State.

Saturday just served as the reminder of all of that.

In one month, McElwain confirmed all of the doubts. He couldn’t possibly sustain that pace in one-possession games. He couldn’t handle the pressure that came with coming short of expectations at a place like Florida. That’s why he sought sympathy with the death threat comments. And on Saturday, it was evident that he couldn’t get Florida to the level it felt it belonged on.

McElwain’s tenure in Gainesville will go down as one of the more bizarre ones that we’ve seen at any Power 5 program in recent memory. He won two division titles and took the Gators places they hadn’t been since Meyer. McElwain didn’t have a Hugh Freeze scandal at Ole Miss, nor did he leave for greener pastures like Lane Kiffin. But he did the one thing he couldn’t afford to do — he gave his bosses a chance to cut bait.

For two and a half years, McElwain gave Florida a roller coaster. The wins were wild, the losses were devastating and everything in between was bizarre.

On Sunday, the ride came to a screeching halt in perfectly fitting fashion.