8-4 is not an unfair standard for Florida Football and Billy Napier to meet in 2024

Everyone knows that Florida football has a brutal schedule for the 2024 season. Every entity that writes about college football has commented on the difficulty, and we hear that it has certainly written our fair share of difficulty that the alligators are going to have this season.

But the brutality and relentless defiance of opponents does not protect Florida and Billy Napier compared to expectations this season. And while the task ahead is colossal, it is still fair to set a checkpoint for where this program is supposed to be by the third year of the Napier era.

THE Kelley Ford Power Index tweeted an interesting perspective last week on how tough Florida’s schedule will be this season. They compared Florida’s schedule to everyone else’s schedule in the country and determined what the 12th best team would reasonably expect to win, given that schedule.

According to the stats, even the 12th best team in the country would have a hard time going 7-5 with Florida’s schedule.

So, in one fell swoop, going 7-5 for Florida this year could be defined as success. However, we would look at a 7-5 season and say that Billy Napier doesn’t have Florida where it was supposed to be in the third year of his tenure.

For as many headaches as Dan Mullen caused, he still put together top 10 seasons in 2018, 2019 and 2020. He was fired, among other reasons, because his recruiting was never at a high enough level to get the Gators over the hump . Napier was brought in so Florida could possibly take one step forward, not two permanent steps back.

And yes, Napier had to clean the house of all the remains of Mullen. But we’re now in year three and he has a roster made up almost entirely of his own guys. In year three, anything lower than 8-4 means Billy Napier doesn’t have the Gators as a top 10 program.

Returning to Florida’s schedule, let’s assume Florida is the 8th best team in the country. Apart from maybe Tennessee, Is there anyone Florida plays in its first seven games where the 8th ranked team would be the underdog? So let’s pretend, for the sake of argument, that the 8th-ranked team is 6-1 in this stretch.

Then there’s the end of the schedule, which might be one of the craziest times in college football history. It’s still not unreasonable to say that the 8th ranked team could go 2-3 in this stretch.

Add 6-1 and 2-3 together and you get 8-4.

Available for this particular Gator team? It’s possible, but getting there would require huge improvements.

Is it unfair to say that this is something Napier should achieve by year three? No, because Napier was hired to make Florida a top 10 team and beyond.