1. I don’t want to get on a soapbox, but …

I’m not saying pipe down amid the celebration, but there’s a harsh reality of the Florida offense that must be embraced.

It’s going to get downright brutal for the Gators before it gets better. How brutal, you ask?

The first Gators loss to Kentucky in 31 years.

“They’re playing as well as anyone in the (SEC),” Florida coach Jim McElwain said of Kentucky.

And Florida, despite all the feel-good from last weekend’s last-second win over Tennessee, is playing worse on offense than anyone in the conference. The façade of a last-second Hail Mary victory is covering up a looming – and lasting — mess.

Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

Take away two plays from last weekend’s victory over Tennessee, and the angst and agita around the entire program is overwhelming. Without the 63-yard Hail Mary; without Malik Davis’ 74-yard run that ended with a fumble and touchback, the Gators were left with this:

— 245 total yards on 55 plays (4.45 yards per play) for 13 points on offense.

— One offensive touchdown all season (the Florida defense has three).

— A starting quarterback with an efficiency rating of 126.1 (the national lead is Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield at 224.22).

— Three running backs who in two games have combined for 134 yards on 34 carries (67 yards per game; 3.9 yards per carry).

— An offense that has stumbled for 435 total yards in two games (217.5 per game) on 108 plays (4.02 yards per play). Those 108 plays are last in the nation among teams who have played at least two games.

— Without those two big chunk plays, there are two teams in college football worse than Florida in total offense (UTEP and Georgia Southern).

See where this is headed? Let me lead you further down the road.

Kentucky has the No. 3 rush defense in the nation, holding teams to 57 yards per game. The Wildcats held a hot South Carolina team to 54 yards rushing, and got two interceptions from rising star quarterback Jake Bentley — and a South Carolina passing offense light years ahead of Florida.

Now you’re asking Franks, who is a Hail Mary from more questions about being ready for the moment, to stroll into the biggest game in years at Commonwealth Stadium and make plays to win the game.

Earlier this week at Florida’s media opportunity, Franks described what it was like going to school Monday morning after the play of the early college football season. He arrived at his history class Monday morning and his professor greeted him with a trophy.

Typically, the trophy is presented to any student who asks or answers a pertinent question.

“He just gave me the trophy out of nowhere to start the class, and told me good throw,” Franks said.

Any standing ovations, Franks was asked.

“Just a couple of stares,” Franks said. “It was kind of awkward.”

Sort of like the Florida offense.

Even the student body has to see it to believe it.

2. Careful what you wish for

While we all eagerly anticipate the next weekly installment of Where Will Chip Coach in 2018, it’s time for a refresher course on why Chip Kelly left college football in the first place.

Because the NCAA posse was closing in on him at Oregon.

Look, the NCAA doesn’t randomly give out a show cause order for coaches. You have to earn it.

More specifically, you have to knowingly break a significant NCAA rule and/or lie to the NCAA about said rule to be given the harshest punishment allowed for a coach.

Kelly did both.

Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

Months after he left Oregon for the NFL after the 2012 season, Kelly received an 18-month show cause order from the NCAA, which essentially prevented him from coaching an NCAA program without a university appealing to the NCAA (it has never happened before in major college football).

He received the dreaded show cause order for misleading the NCAA — in the real world, we call this lying; the NCAA doesn’t want to hurt feelings — and tried to cover up that lie with another lie before being exposed in a scheme to pay street agent Willie Lyles $25,000 to steer high school players to Oregon.

You have to knowingly break a significant NCAA rule and/or lie to the NCAA about said rule to be given the harshest punishment allowed for a coach. Chip Kelly did both.

Among the players Lyles “mentored” were star tailbacks LaMichael James and Lache Seastrunk.

When he was caught, Kelly had Lyles send him fake recruiting information so he could argue to the NCAA that Oregon paid Lyles for recruiting information (see: covering a lie with another lie). The only problem: the information Lyles sent Kelly was full of out of date material on former recruits.

This, everyone, is the dream scenario coach for deep pocket boosters in the SEC.

3. The older, the better

I think I can speak for us all when I say the last thing – the very last thing – you want is to get Alabama’s attention the week before playing the Tide.

So forgive Vanderbilt defensive tackle Nifae Lealao, who moments after a thrilling win last week against then-No. 18 Kansas State, had a television camera shoved in his face and said these ominous words:

“When you come to our house, we show you how to play some SEC ball. It don’t matter where you’re from, you’re going to know what ball we play.”

And then, the kicker, “Alabama, you’re next.”

Before we get sidetracked, let me show you what Vandy coach Derek Mason said about his team, which has upperclassmen (juniors or seniors) at 19 of 22 starting positions – including 13 seniors (seven 5th-year seniors).

“When you start to get an older football team in this conference, and you can only put 11 guys on the field, you can play with anybody,” Mason said. “You just got to make sure those guys believe it.”

Why wouldn’t they? There’s no recent history between the teams. Vandy and Alabama haven’t played since 2011; all the Tide are is another team that doesn’t respect what the 30 upperclassmen on the Commodores’ two-deep depth chart have built.

Many of those 30 have gone through a coaching change, and persevered through the rough 2014 and 2015 seasons. They were part of that Vandy team in 2013 that won at Florida for the first time since 1945, that beat SEC East Division heavyweights Florida, Georgia and Tennessee in the same season.

This group knows two things: what it’s like to win important games, and what it’s like to start over and rebuild and put yourself in position to win important games again.

So yeah, Alabama, you’re next.

4. An omen of things to come

A quick recap, moving forward, for the Ole Miss 2017 season:

The Rebels can’t run the ball, uber-talented QB Shea Patterson tries to do too much and makes too many mistakes, and the game gets away from Ole Miss in the second half with an exhausted defense giving up. Any questions, please see the Cal game tape.

Rinse and repeat for the remainder of the season.

5. The Weekly 5

Five picks against the spread

  • Alabama at Vanderbilt (+18.5)
  • Mississippi State (+6.5) at Georgia
  • Florida at Kentucky (+3)
  • Auburn at Missouri (+19)
  • Arkansas (+3) vs. Texas A&M

Last week: 2-3

Season: 9-6 (.600)

6. Playing big in big games

Nick Fitzgerald passed his first test last week against LSU. They only get tougher from here out.

Fitzgerald spent all offseason cleaning up his mechanics and zeroing in on becoming an elite thrower. The idea was to not only improve his chances of playing in the NFL, but also Mississippi State’s chances of competing for an SEC Championship.

Those who laughed in the offseason at that very notion are suddenly taking a more serious look at the Bulldogs after last week’s 30-point thumping of LSU. These are the games – against ranked conference opponents, and this weekend at No.11 Georgia – where Fitzgerald will truly see his improvement.

“As a team, we have to play better against ranked teams,” Fitzgerald said. “Me, as our quarterback, I can’t make mistakes that I made last season.”

In three games last year against ranked opponents, Fitzgerald completed 40 of 88 passes (45 percent) for 474 yards, with 2 TDs and 3 INTs. The Bulldogs were 1-2 in those games — the win against a fading Texas A&M team – and Fitzgerald’s pass efficiency rating was a horrific 91.3.

Last week against LSU, Fitzgerald was 15 of 23 for 180 yards, with 2 TDs and 0 INTs. His pass efficiency rating was an unthinkable 298.13 – about 70 points higher than the current NCAA leader.

When Mississippi State’s made its run to No.1 in the first two months of the 2014 season, the Bulldogs did it on the strength of three consecutive victories over Top 10 teams (at LSU, Texas A&M, Auburn). This time around, it will be three straight Top 15 teams (LSU, at Georgia, at Auburn) that could define the first half of the season.

7. Poll Games

You’re going to say you love polls. I’m going to tell you I hate polls.

Then I’m going to introduce you to Steve Batterson of the Quad City (Iowa) Times – and, by proxy, the Associated Press Top 25 poll.

Steve is an AP poll voter, and after last week’s games, he filled out his poll and and sent it in with this doozy: LSU ranked No. 19, Mississippi State unranked.

There are so many things wrong here, it’s hard to find a starting point.

So let’s begin with Batterson explaining his pick, word for word:

“Mississippi State has not been on my ballot so far this season,” Batterson wrote to me in an email. “Obviously they had a terrific win over LSU last weekend, and much like a week ago when I wanted to see how San Diego State would fare against Stanford before including them for the first time this week, the outcome of this week’s game at Georgia is something I will watch closely in regards to Mississippi State.”

This is the problem with polls, everyone. Polls are, by nature, a binary option. It’s Team A or Team B.

Yet somehow polls have become visions of what voters believe should happen or could happen or will happen. It’s a sea of gray between the shores of black and white, depending solely on how each particular voter sets up his or her own parameters of response.

It’s nonsense.

Mississippi State beat LSU by 30. They were both unbeaten going into the game, and neither had particularly impressive wins against quality opponents in the first two weeks of the season.

Yet this is what polls are – and don’t kid yourself, the College Football Playoff selection committee is the exact same thing. A sea of gray.

Don’t believe it? Three years ago in the first season of the CFP, the committee spent six weeks telling us that TCU was better than Baylor – despite Baylor’s head to head win and identical records.

Then, on the last week of the season, TCU beat Iowa State by 18,00 points and Baylor beat Kansas State by 11 and – tada! – Baylor jumped TCU in the final poll.

I’ve been part of this process, and understand the dynamics of how people think and react to different games. I was an AP voter in the early 2000s, but then 2004 happened.

A group of voters from the state of Texas all voted Texas over Cal (or voted Cal down) in the final regular season poll to manipulate the final poll and the bowl selection process. Cal’s only loss of the year was a last-second loss to an NFL team masquerading as the USC Trojans, but the move by Texas media allowed the Longhorns to jump ahead of the Bears and into the Rose Bowl.

I walked away from the process then, and still marvel at the weekly nonsense now.

“I’ve been voting in the AP poll for around 20 years now and traditionally movement on my ballot is probably more conservative than others, both in terms of upward and downward movement,” Batterson said. “I’m not inclined to bump somebody in based on one big win, or conversely dump somebody totally out based on the result of one game.”

So you’ve got that going for you, Mississippi State. Which is nice.

8. Ask and you shall receive

Hey, Matt: Why don’t more coaches take control of play calling in critical situations? It’s their job on the line. Specifically, why didn’t Butch Jones do so last week?

Lonnie Jackson, Nashville

Lonnie: It’s a tough line to walk. A coach makes the important coordinator hires knowing he wants them to do their job no matter the situation. It’s important for coaching staff (and player) harmony, but it doesn’t mean a coach completely ignores crucial moments in the game.

Case in point: When Tennessee had a 1st-and-goal at the Florida 1 in the third quarter, Jones should have stepped up and said over the headset, “let’s not get pretty here, and do what we do best.”

The Vols were wearing down the Florida defense with tailback John Kelly, and run to Kelly was the obvious call. Only Scott chose a fade that fell incomplete, and two plays later, Tennessee turned the ball over.

Later in the fourth, Kelly didn’t see the ball in three 1st-and-goal tries from the 9.

In each situation, Jones could have simply said “do what we do best” or “ride the hot hand” or any other coaching cliché to make it patently clear to Scott that he wanted the ball to go to Kelly. He didn’t, and those were two critical misses by the Tennessee offense.

9. The numbers game

11.75: the average margin of victory for Texas A&M over Arkansas in Hogs coach Bret Bielema’s four games against the Aggies.

Why is that number critical? Because the annual Texas A&M game has become the definition of Bielema’s tenure in Fayetteville: close, but never quite there.

Arkansas should have won two of the four games, and has lost all four – twice in overtime. Arkansas had the better team three of the four games.

Forget about Bielema’s 26-27 record in five seasons at Arkansas, or his 10-22 record in SEC games. The Texas A&M game – where Arkansas has given up an average of 38 points a game – is the true tell of where the Hogs are headed under Bielema.

Another loss in this game – against a struggling offense playing a true freshman quarterback with limited knowledge of the passing game – could send the Hogs into another half-season fog that has defined Bielema’s teams at Arkansas.

10. Quote to note

LSU coach Ed Orgeron, on if he thought about playing 5-star freshman QB Myles Brennan in last week’s loss to Mississippi State: “It never came up that Danny (Etling) was playing that bad that we need to put Myles in. We’re going to give Myles more reps this week, and see if he can play the next couple of games.”