The Gators clinched a division title last weekend in Knoxville, but they don’t look at all like a team that will win an SEC Championship.

Instead, the Gators look like a team lost in a fog, all too fitting a metaphor given the heavy fog that descended on The Swamp as the Gators battled to save their College Football Playoff dreams in the second half Saturday evening against LSU. The fog blanketed all aspects of Florida’s football operation and by the night’s end, it smothered Florida’ national championship dreams, as LSU upended Florida 37-34 in a thrilling game at Steve Spurrier Field.

Florida should have had the opportunity to play the program’s biggest game in a decade next weekend. Instead, they laid an egg in their final tune-up. Not only did the defeat spoil what should have been a special senior night in The Swamp, it showed that for all the progress the Gators have made under Dan Mullen, this is a program that still has so much work to do to become a legitimate College Football Playoff threat.

The Gators played sloppy, as if their minds and hearts were already in Atlanta. The Gators gained 609 yards offensively, enough to win on most nights, but Florida didn’t play clean football, and LSU took full advantage. The Tigers, playing for little more than the hope of not having a losing season, played hard and clean. That’s usually a winning formula.

Meanwhile, Kyle Trask waited until Senior night in The Swamp to look mortal.

Under constant pressure from a much-maligned LSU defense that only a week ago surrendered 55 points to Alabama, Trask had 3 first-half turnovers, including an interception that LSU corner Eli Ricks took 68 yards to the house for a touchdown, as LSU jumped to a 24-17 halftime lead.

It wasn’t just Florida’s Heisman candidate who struggled.

Florida’s red-zone offense, ranked 4th in the country and 1st in the SEC, scored only 2 first-half touchdowns on 5 first-half trips, and turned the football over on one occasion. Florida would also settle for a field goal on a red-zone trip late in the 4th quarter, failing to put pressure on LSU to score a touchdown to win.

Florida’s offensive line, ranked 8th in limiting sacks and 13th in college football in limiting pressures entering Saturday, allowed LSU to sack Trask 3 times in the first half alone, and the Tigers finished the night with 12 pressures on plays that didn’t generate sacks. The constant pressure rattled the usually unflappable Trask, threatening to spoil what should have been a special Senior night.

Florida’s secondary, having made great strides over the past month, blew a simple coverage on a Max Johnson deep ball late in the first half, as Tre’Vez Johnson failed to rotate over when Todd Grantham blitzed a corner. The bust allowed Kayshon Boutte to walk into the end zone and give LSU the lead back a drive removed from Florida reclaiming it late in the second quarter. Late in the game, burned by the corner blitz once, Todd Grantham decided to go to it again, blitzing a corner from Ocala. It failed again, and LSU regained the lead.

Part of the reason Grantham may have felt tempted to blitz corners repeatedly was that the Gators’ pass rush, which had clawed its way back into the top 20 nationally in sack rate, havoc and pressures this week, failed to register a sack in the opening half and nabbed only 5 pressures on the evening, one of which resulted in an LSU touchdown anyway, on this inch-perfect throw by Johnson.

The result of this maelstrom of middling mediocrity was that the Gators allowed Johnson, a true freshman quarterback making his first career start, to get far too comfortable. When Florida brought more pressure to disrupt his rhythm, whether in the first half or the beginning of the second half, the blitzes didn’t get home and the coverages didn’t hold up. Johnson made the Gators pay, tossing 3 touchdown passes and grinding out 43 valuable yards extending plays with his legs.

Florida had feasted in the late 2nd and early 3rd quarters of games this season, outscoring opponents by an average of 10 points per game on the final 2 possessions of the first half and first 2 of the second. Those end-of-half and start-of-half momentum swings had often helped Florida create separation in tight football games. Not Saturday. LSU owned this stretch against the Gators. After Florida took a 17-14 lead with 2:25 remaining in the first half, the Tigers reeled off 13 points in succession over the course of the next 9 minutes of game time. There were only 8 minutes and change remaining in the third quarter when Kyle Trask and Florida touched the ball in the second half and by then, the Gators trailed by multiple scores.

That’s when the Gators finally woke up.

But by the time Florida punched back, the Tigers believed they could win, and belief is a dangerous thing to allow a super-talented championship program like LSU to have. The Tigers marched 84 yards in 9 plays to seize the lead back, 34-31, in the 4th quarter, and never trailed again.

It goes without saying Florida will need to be better against Alabama than they were Saturday night against a shorthanded, struggling LSU. A great version of Florida — say the one that swamped Ole Miss or the one that dominated Georgia, for example — might not be sufficient to stop this almighty version of Alabama.

The sloppy, distracted version of Florida that showed up for Senior night will get steamrolled.

A mortal Trask won’t be sufficient against the Crimson Tide. It is worth noting here that Trask, even on his worst night as Florida’s starting quarterback, still threw for 474 yards and accounted for 4 touchdowns. He also moved Florida 41 yards in just 21 seconds to set up the 51-yard field goal attempt Evan McPherson missed just left as time expired. But it wasn’t enough, and if Trask turns the football over 3 times next Saturday, the Tide won’t just beat the Gators Saturday — they’ll embarrass Florida.

Grantham’s defense backslid too. If it could only muster occasional stops and almost no pressure against an LSU offense with a true freshman in his first start playing without the Tigers top 2020 targets in Terrace Marshall Jr. and Arik Gilbert, well — imagine how bad it will be against Mac Jones, Najee Harris and DeVonta Smith next week.

Finally, a Florida team whose leaders fail it, as Marco Wilson, a redshirt junior who is supposed to know better, did Saturday night in the 4th quarter committing the most confounding unsportsmanlike conduct penalty in program history, which ultimately set up LSU’s winning field goal and kept the football away from Trask and the Gators’ offense, won’t have the steel or nerve needed to stop the ruthless, disciplined unit Nick Saban will field at Mercedes Benz Stadium next Saturday in the SEC Championship.

Yes, winning the East was nice. It is an accomplishment worth savoring, given where this program was when Mullen took over 3 autumns ago. It’s also not the ceiling at Florida and shouldn’t be expected to be.

Fans are right to want more and Mullen, who has never shied away from Florida’s championship expectations, understands this. Florida will play for a championship next Saturday night. But this Saturday, we saw they are still a long way away from consistently having a chance to win. That part is harder. That’s the part Florida isn’t ready for yet.