When you think of Florida at its peak, you probably think of elite offenses.

It makes sense. The 1990s Fun ‘n’ Gun offenses revolutionized the sport and led to a national title. The Urban Meyer-Tim Tebow duo produced a pair of titles, though unlike “Swamp Kings,” we acknowledge the greatness of Chris Leak on this platform. And even for the majority of the 2020 season when Florida had legitimate Playoff hopes, it was on the heels of Dan Mullen’s top-ranked passing attack in America.

You think Florida, you think great offense. History, however, suggests that Florida’s defensive tradition was a bit more consistent, especially in the 21st century. If you think of what Florida has become in the 2020s, you probably think of something else — horrendous defense.

In the first 4 years of the 2020s, there’s no more disappointing unit in the SEC than the Florida defense.

The Gators haven’t just gone downhill defensively. They’ve fallen off a cliff and are just now trying to muster the strength to hobble back up it.

Sound harsh? It’s not.

From 2000-19, the Gators had 1 unit finish outside the top 50 in scoring defense, and it never finished outside of the top 70. That non-top 50 finish was the lost 2017 season, which was marred by credit card fraud, misidentified naked shark mounting and fake death threats. From 2020-23, Florida hasn’t even finished as a top-70 scoring defense yet.

To recap, a season that was marred by credit card fraud, misidentified naked shark-mounting and fake death threats yielded a better FBS finish in scoring defense than that Florida has had in the 2020s so far.

Woof.

At one point, Florida fans could blame Mullen deciding to run it back with Todd Grantham for Year 4, even though he ended Year 3 by allowing an average of 43 points per game in an ugly 3-game losing streak that wiped Playoff hopes off the board (I even subtracted the 2 defensive touchdowns that Florida allowed in that stretch and it was still a total of 130 points allowed by Grantham’s unit in those final 3 games). Never mind the fact that it was Florida’s worst scoring defense since the Woodrow Wilson administration in 1917.

Sure, maybe Year 1 of the Billy Napier in 2022 had a bit of that stench lingering. After all, he was tasked with turning around a unit that ranked No. 73 in the country and couldn’t even hold FCS Samford to less than half a hundred in The Swamp. The bar was low … and it still wasn’t met. In 2022, Florida’s defense ranked:

  • No. 87 in FBS in scoring defense
  • No. 111 in FBS in yards/rush allowed
  • No. 111 in FBS in opposing QB rating allowed
  • No. 119 in FBS in yards/pass allowed
  • No. 122 in FBS in yards/play allowed
  • No. 132 in FBS in 40-yard plays allowed

As we say on The Saturday Down South Podcast, that’s “basura,” which is Spanish for “trash.”

Yeah, the bar was low, but perhaps Napier realized that bringing DC Patrick Toney with him from Louisiana was the wrong move. Or perhaps Toney realized he was in over his head as an early-30-something DC, which was why he left Florida to be the Arizona Cardinals defensive backs coach.

Napier somehow went even younger with Toney’s successor by bringing in 20-something Austin Armstrong (he turned 30 in 2023). Early, that yielded positive results. In August/September, Florida surrendered just 17 points per game. Mind you, there were 3 Power 5 opponents in that group. But as you can see, month by month, it got worse.

  • August/September: 17.4 points/game allowed, No. 25 in FBS
  • October: 32 points/game allowed, No. 96 in FBS
  • November: 37 points/game allowed, No. 115 in FBS

Woof, woof. That’s 2 barks for a defense that didn’t have any … you get it.

So in steps Ron Roberts. He’ll work alongside Armstrong, though it’s worth noting that Roberts carries the “co-defensive coordinator” title while the former doesn’t. Roberts reunited with Napier after working as his DC at Louisiana in 2018-19. More recently, he was fired by Power 5 programs at season’s end each of the past 2 years.

Oh, check that. Roberts left Auburn on his own to take a lesser role at Florida.

Whatever the case, the question should be asked — what’s the goal? Let’s start with having a top-70 scoring defense for the first time since 2019. Will that alone save Napier’s job? Not unless it’s combined with an elite offense like the 2020 squad had (I won’t hold my breath on that). Simply finishing in the top half of FBS after returning 66% of last year’s defensive production isn’t the goal.

The goal should be to avoid late-season defensive collapses like we’ve seen throughout the 2020s. It can’t always be a byproduct of injury-related depth issues. Not at Florida. The Gators can’t be the program that suddenly can’t tackle a soul when their middle linebacker goes down (Ventrell Miller was excellent but it’s hard to fathom how badly Florida struggled to replace him when he got hurt in 2021).

If we correctly treat December as the final month of the 2020 regular season — Florida had 4 games that month because of the delayed COVID start to the year — look at how poorly things have gone down the stretch for the Gator defense in the 2020s:

  • Dec. 2020 — 40.8 points/game allowed, No. 95 in FBS
  • Nov. 2021 — 34.3 points/game allowed, No. 98 in FBS
  • Nov. 2022 — 26.5 points/game allowed, No. 68 in FBS
  • Nov. 2023 — 37 points/game allowed, No. 115 in FBS

By the way, none of those stretches include facing Georgia, and yet, those numbers are still that alarming.

If that’s at some program like Minnesota, fine. It happens. It’s not, though. It’s the place that used to have a floor of a top-30 defense. Now, it’s the program with 1 defensive All-SEC selection in the last 3 years, and it was Princely Umanmielen, who earned that honor and … transferred to Ole Miss.

Triple woof. That’s all you need to know.

I know this sounds like I’m just picking on the Florida defense. Lord knows that there have been other extremely disappointing SEC units in the 2020s. “Honorable mention” for this category would include the Texas A&M offense, though that group just improved by 11 points per game. It would also include the LSU defense, though while that group regressed by 5.5 points per game in 2023, it also beat Florida for the 5th consecutive season to clinch its longest win streak ever in the rivalry.

Florida’s defense was only up for this dubious honor because of the high bar that it set in the first 20 years of this century. All it has done since the calendar turned to the 2020s is make that feel like a distant memory.

A long hobble up the cliff awaits.