Gators are who we thought they’d be, but they keep winning anyway

It’s hard to ignore what’s happening at Florida. You watch ever so painfully as the Gators slog it out this month with Vanderbilt and South Carolina and Florida Atlantic and you see one ugly team.

There’s that Denny Green bell going off. Paraphrasing of course, but the Gators are who we thought they were.

What we thought before this season started was that the Gators weren’t going to be very good. It’s the SEC, of course, so everyone weighed in with an opinion.

The majority of preseason rankings had Florida slotted fifth in the SEC East — and 12th overall in the SEC. Some had them ahead of South Carolina for fourth, but certainly not all. Georgia, Tennessee and Missouri were all ranked higher, pretty much across the board.

The reasons were obvious. No quarterback, young offensive line, no true star at running back.

Eight SEC teams were ranked in the preseason AP poll, and Florida wasn’t one of them. They got only four votes, meaning they were ranked 36th in the country. A week later, Mississippi State and Texas A&M joined the Top 25, setting a record with 10 teams from one conference being ranked. Florida still wasn’t in. Ten out of 14 SEC ranked in the Top 25, and Florida was nowhere to be found.

It took four wins and some exceptional play by Will Grier at quarterback before Florida finally showed up at No. 25 in the Week 5 poll. They went all the way to No. 11 after beating Ole Miss and got as high as No. 8 a week later.

But once Grier failed a drug test and was suspended for a year by the NCAA, the team was handed over to Treon Harris. There was a close loss at LSU and a rout of Georgia, and all of Gator Nation  thought everything was still going to be alright.

Hardly.

It took a last-second field goal to beat Vanderbilt 9-7. Vandy has lost seven games. It took a late score with two minutes to go to finally shake South Carolina, which has lost eight games. It took overtime to beat Florida Atlantic, and the Owls have lost nine games.

Every week, it just kept getting uglier and uglier.

Clearly, this team really misses Will Grier. They’ve also got issues along the offensive line, both with injuries and inexperience. We’ve learned in November that they are very hard to watch.

But there’s one point that can’t be overlooked about these ugly Gators.

They keep winning anyway. And that means something.

Actually, it means a lot.

First-year coach Jim McElwain is all smiles after every win, talking about how proud he is of his guys for knowing how to close out games and finding a way to win. He cringes through film sessions, certainly, but he’ll take the wins. They’re hard to come by, especially in this league. He’ll take them.

Because at the end of the day, he still gets to hang that 10-1 record around his neck and walk proudly around the streets of Gainesville.

They don’t ask how,  they just ask how many.

In the next two weeks the Gators have to play Florida State and probably Alabama. The consensus is that UF loses by a good bit this weekend and by a lot next weekend. Makes sense, based on what we’ve seen recently.

But then we remember this: Finding a way to win breeds confidence. So don’t put it past the Gators to make a stand down the stretch, to make an argument. We know they can look spectacular at times – remember the 38-10 win over Ole Miss and the 27-3 spanking of Georgia were actually this season – and they may find their way again.

A pick-six, a punt return, a missed tackle here or there by an opponent.

You just never know. The Gators are who we thought they were.

But what are they?

Winners.

Tom Brew

Tom Brew is an award-winning journalist and author who is covering SEC football for Saturday Down South.