Believe it or not, the season continues after Week 1.
There are generally two schools of thought after the first week of college football. The teams that struggled probably aren’t as bad as you think and the teams that dominate probably aren’t as good as you think.
Then there are the No. 17 Florida Gators, who could very easily run the table for the remainder of the regular season or loaf into a disappointing season and never recover from a poor effort in Saturday’s 33-17 loss to No. 11 Michigan.
Florida now has every advantage a team could possibly want to fight back in the College Football Playoff race. Five of the Gators’ next six games are at home, eight of the remaining 11 are in Florida and they only have one set of back-to-back road games, in early November against Missouri and South Carolina.
Given the uncertainty of the injury to Florida State quarterback Deondre Francois, it’s possible the Gators will be favored in all 11 remaining games this season.
Florida last lost its opener in 1989, against Ole Miss. The Gators finished 7-5 (4-3 SEC) that season.
But though the schedule is certainly favorable, don’t mistake a favorable schedule for an easy one. This schedule is tricky. This week the opponent is Northern Colorado, not a big deal and a good opportunity to try to get some younger offensive players a confidence boost.
After that things get interesting with Tennessee, a road game against Kentucky and Vanderbilt to close out September. Again, the Gators should be favored in all three games but they will need to show up and play. And if they win them, that’s still not a good indication of whether the Gators are a legitimately good football team.
And that’s the issue the Gators will have to deal with all season. They could win their next 11 and do it in dominating fashion and there still would be questions if the Gators are legitimately good or not. The schedule doesn’t appear to have any playoff contenders on it, especially if FSU can’t recover from Saturday’s loss to Alabama.
However, if the Gators can’t get through the rest of September without another loss the season could spiral out of control and questions about the future of head coach Jim McElwain in Gainesville will begin. Despite back-to-back SEC East Division titles McElwain hasn’t come close to winning over the fan base and the loss Saturday didn’t help.
But the Gators have to move on from Saturday and get back to winning. The more they win the greater chance they will have to contend for a playoff berth and finally answer questions about their legitimacy. But any more early losses and the only question will be if McElwain is the right man for the program.
Corey Long is a freelance writer for SaturdayDownSouth.com. Follow Corey on Twitter @CoreyLong.
