Florida visits No. 9 Missouri on Saturday night (7:30 pm, ESPN) looking to avoid a 4th consecutive loss.

The Gators need 1 win in their final 2 games to get bowl eligible, but given both of Florida’s final opponents are ranked inside the College Football Playoff top 10, a victory seems unlikely.

The prospects of a third consecutive losing season for Florida and a second consecutive losing season under head coach Billy Napier have ratcheted up the noise in Gainesville. Florida has not suffered 3 consecutive losing seasons in the modern, post-integration era (1972). Between 1980-2012, Florida didn’t have a single losing season. Since 2013, Florida has suffered 4 losing seasons under 4 different coaching staffs.

Can Florida, the program with the 3rd-most wins in the SEC since the league fully integrated in 1972, avoid a 5th losing campaign in 11 years? If they don’t, where does that leave coach Billy Napier, aside from being fired by more and more Twitter users every week?

Napier isn’t getting fired by Florida in 2023, despite what the keyboard-wielding Twitter mobs suggest. He inherited a cultural tire fire and a lack of any meaningful depth from his predecessor, Dan Mullen, and the hire was always a long-term bet by Florida that a slow rebuild would lead to sustained success, rather than the pockets of moderate success and pockets of poverty approach utilized by the Gators’ revolving door of head coaches since Tim Tebow and Brandon Spikes ran out of eligibility in 2009. Even if that weren’t the case, Napier’s $31.6 million buyout is nearly prohibitive for a program that is paying Mullen and just finished paying Will Muschamp not to coach.

Perceptions matter, though, and as one Bull Gator booster told me a month ago, writing off the rank and file fans that “spend their hard-earned money and want to win, too” is done at your own risk. Napier’s strength, to this point, is high school recruiting, and even that took a hit this week with the flips of 5-star edge Jamonta Waller to Auburn and 4-star corner Wardell Mack to Texas. The rumored flip of another 4-star, edge Amaris Williams, increases the “on edge” feelings of Florida’s already frustrated rank-and-file fan base.

When recruits are flipping, opposing quarterbacks are setting SEC records, and a third consecutive losing season is imminent, patience is understandably a tough sell.

Napier, as you’d expect, believes his program is on the right track. Asked Monday about the prospect of back-to-back losing seasons, Napier reiterated that he knew rebuilding Florida into a dominant program would take time.

“Absolutely (we are on the right track),” Napier told the media. “We knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Look, I think you have to go into it — you develop a skill-set. That talent takes time to build a relationship with, recruit, sign, and then develop. You’re equipped. These are the things I talk about relative to our players, and I wouldn’t be up here without going through tough stuff like they are now.”

When Napier stares across the field to the opposing sideline this weekend at Faurot Field, he’ll see an object lesson in what can happen when a coach is able to build according to his meticulous plan, beginning with a cultural teardown and roster reconstruction.

Eli Drinkwitz, the 40-year-old in his 4th season as head coach at Missouri, has one of the nation’s best football teams after going 5-5 in Year 1 and suffering back-to-back losing seasons in years 2 and 3.

Drinkwitz will honor 27 seniors on Saturday who have “been a part of rough days and now better days in terms of what we built and are building here,” as Drinkwitz put it on Monday. Now, with a 10-win season and New Year’s 6 bowl in their grasp, the rough days seem worth the wait.

Building Missouri back up from a program that won 2 SEC East titles in 2013 and 2014 to a team that put the biggest scare into back-to-back national champion and No. 1 Georgia in 2023 hasn’t happened without hard work, meticulous vision and self-reflection.

First, Drinkwitz has recruited at a higher clip than Barry Odom, his predecessor, who never had a losing season at Mizzou but couldn’t win key recruiting battles, either. Drinkwitz’s focus on St. Louis, a longtime talent hot bed that had bled talent away from Missouri in the latter part of the 2010s, was step one.

Drinkwitz promised to recruit the area better and has delivered. Including players like 5-star receiver Luther Burden III, Drinkwitz has landed at least 6 blue-chip players from Missouri and 3 from the St. Louis metro area. That includes East St. Louis, across the river in Illinois, where Burden is from and where Barry Odom landed only 1 player his entire tenure. Drinkwitz’s most recent class included 7 players out of Missouri and 1 from East St. Louis. By recruiting talent-rich Missouri better than anyone had in over a decade, Missouri’s talent composite number increased from the mid-40s in the Odom tenure to 25th this season. While that is behind Florida, a point Gators fans make repeatedly, the continuity at Missouri and cultural stability has reaped huge dividends in Year 4 of the Drinkwitz regime.

Drinkwitz also had to make concessions and self-reflexive sacrifices to build a winner.

He surrendered play-calling duties this season, despite admitting to SDS at SEC Media Days that it was “the hardest thing for me to do as a coach, period, because I love calling plays and I think I am really good at it.”

Napier is expected to do the same at Florida before his third season, despite 2 offenses that have ranked in the top  20 and top 40 nationally in success rate and top 20 and top 50 nationally in yards per play and total offense in his 2 seasons.

Finally, Drinkwitz has used the portal to address needs and depth. What this has yielded is a Missouri team that, while lacking Florida’s top-end talent, has more viable depth at almost every position.

Take defensive line and linebacker, where the Tigers have had injuries like the one suffered by Chad Bailey, one of PFF’s top-rated linebackers in America, but kept playing at a high level this season. At linebacker, Florida transfer Ty’Ron Hopper has become one of the SEC’s leading tacklers. On the defensive line, Jackson State transfer Nyles Gaddy has been productive, with 3 sacks and 17 pressures. Collectively, the combination of smart portal additions and player development, with talents like Darius Robinson (6.5 sacks) showing out in their senior campaigns, has helped Mizzou field a defense ranked in the top 50 nationally.

That’s been plenty good enough at Missouri thanks to an offense that has clicked better than at any time in the Drinkwitz era under the attentive eye of new offensive coordinator Kirby Moore. The Tigers rank 18th nationally in SP+ offensive efficiency, 19th in yards gained per play and 26th in total offense. A season ago, the Tigers ranked in the bottom half of the country in each of those categories. The personnel and scheme didn’t change much, but after the rough days and a smart coaching change, the Tigers made good on the building process. The mix of veteran recruits (tackle Javon Foster, Burden III, and  quarterback Brady Cook) and transfers has worked offensively as well. Cody Schrader, a D II running back from Missouri whom Drinkwitz bet on when no one else did, now leads the SEC in rushing.

Player evaluations, and the opportunity and time to develop the players you evaluate, works.

In other words, there’s plenty to be learned from Missouri and their patience in Drinkwitz’s process and vision.

The vocal minority of Florida fans don’t want to hear this.

They’ll argue that history suggests the ceiling at Florida is national championships, and the ceiling for Drinkwitz and Missouri might be what’s playing out in 2023, a 10-win campaign and a New Year’s 6 bowl bid.

While there’s a historical basis for that argument, there’s also the reality that since 2013, Missouri has suffered the same number of losing seasons (4) as the Gators. There’s also the historical reality that Missouri has won 12 conference championships in football, while Florida has been stuck on 8 (or 11, depending on your view of 1984, 1985 and 1990) since 2008. There’s also the reality that but for a late collapse against LSU, Missouri might be playing for a College Football Playoff spot down the stretch, while the Gators are hoping for bowl eligibility.

Comparison can be the thief of joy. It can also be sobering and instructive. Is Missouri a better job than Florida? You’d be hard-pressed to find an analyst anywhere that would argue yes, but it doesn’t reduce the value in observing and acknowledging what a good program Drinkwitz is building.

Patience can work, and it might be worth a shot at Florida, where the two consistent things in the past decade of football has been coaching turnover and inconsistency.

Saturday night’s tilt between one program that has exercised patience and another that has bucked it may prove to be even more evidence that sometimes, the long game works.