Watching Film: Do the Florida Gators Have A Winning Roster? With Special Guest Bud Davis

welcome back to Vador films I'm Seth Vador I'm joined today by a very special guest we have Bud Davis back for it seems like our yearly chat uh coming in kind of in the offseason here last year when we got together it was kind of and shockingly we're still talking about this Saga but it was on the heels of the the Jaden rashada Saga in Florida's niil apparatus kind of being up in the air you done kind of a really extensive look at different nil apparatuses and we we talked last year about what the best one may be what the best setup may be uh the one you suggested I think ended up being pretty similar to what Florida's and Florida Victorious are doing now uh so I wanted to get your take to start on kind of another you know future look ahead or or or kind of the future college football stuff before we get into uh we're going to talk Florida's roster construction Florida season outlook with the daunting schedule that everyone wants to talk about we'll get to that but start we're going to start a little more General so what do you think is the future kind of of college football player acquisition are we headed towards because you you're a guy that you talk with people in Collective you talk with a lot of different people with your data analysis do you think we're heading towards like an NFL style front office situation yeah and I think we talked about that last year and actually two years ago we started off like you know we were kind of excited and curious to see where this was going to go we were like hey this could be like the wild west I mean it could be the NL with no contracts no salary cap um free agency every year and we're somewhere not quite there but we're also not quite as regulated as the NFL um but one of the big things we've seen is the collectives the fundraising everything's gotten professionalized um more streamlined you know professional fundraisers big groups fundraising um different levels fundraising more integrated with the athletic departments more integrated with the player Personnel side with the recruiting with the coaching um we're just seeing way more alignment in that space and I think the future is really something like the NFL front office um and especially where they've been talking about changing some of the rules on who can recruit versus who can be an onfield coach and separating those a little bit more and I think it's good yeah it seems like with some of the recent rulings that have come down and some of the the stuff that's been proposed where collectives will basically be brought in house well now you're really getting into you know you're really able to communicate between your personnel people and the money people now um or seemingly in the future and then like you said the the proposed rule of allowing analysts to coach on the field which they're not doing right now not at all none of them are coaching on the field currently uh but uh allowing I do you think we get to a point where it's because there's been a ton of Talk Amongst coaches about the recruiting calendar how difficult it is how hard it is on guys with families you think we get to a point where you have coaches that just just coach on the field and people that just go out and recruit yeah I think we will um and I think it's potentially one of the ways you save college football and get these coaches these really high level coaches to stay at the college level rather than jump up to the pros um because you're not asking them to be unicorns like Kirby Smart and Nick Sabin Urban Meyer who can be great recruiters and you know bring these great schemes and bring be great coaches be great Player Development people now you can be a little bit more specialized you can have a team that's great at recruiting and you can have a team that's great at the onfield coaching and the scheming and you can have a team that's doing Player Development and you can have a team that's doing fundraising um and just you know you don't have to try and find these unicorns um so I think ultimately it could potentially lead to a little bit more par and a little bit more excitement at the college level so and just better work life balance for all of these all these guys do and and this is something we've talked about privately as you know the pressure starting to mount on Billy Napier uh you know some people wanted him fired after last season and there is value in continuity uh but one thing we talked about privately is if if it starts to kind of go towards this model would hiring a general manager over football be the way to have continuity even if a Coach is not performing on the field because you can get a new coach but you still have the same people kind of running the show on the Personnel side because that's where the problems come up when you switch coaches right is your your personnel especially now if guys leave yeah hard to recruit is that you think that we're going to get to a point where you got that GM role where maybe some guys like maybe you give a Kirby Smart the bellich che treatment where he can do both but you know maybe guys want to split it up a little bit you think that's G to happen yeah yeah if I'm in charge of youf that's what I'm trying to make happen um you know we see there's a high cost firing coaches these transition classes are brutal you know that's what Napier's going to feel at this year is that transition class where he should have a nice core of upper classman um he had a weaker class and and now he doesn't have those guys he can rely on and we see a lot of teams these transition classes are just brutal for um their ability to sustain performance consisteny if you can take away that burden of firing a coach then all of a sudden it gives you a lot more freedom to optimize your on field coaching if you can get that continuity from your recruiters and your GMS so if I'm UF I'm trying to set up a situation where I've got as much continuity as I can when I have coaches change um it's tough to do um and continuity doesn't always equal great recruiting I think Billy Gonzalez has been here for how long he should have great connections he's in an extremely fertile wide receiver recruiting ground and he doesn't dominate High School recruiting but you know it's not recruiting is not one thing no that's for sure and you know we talked a little bit about you know the possibility of general managers possibility of you know totally separating onfield coaching and talent acquisition right another thing that seems like it's going to be brought over and not have would have to be collectively bargained uh but is a salary cap so I want to talk to you um you know there's numbers being thrown around right now like 20 million dollars and that's kind of a number we talked about last year actually funnily enough 20ish million dollar now I don't know right now if all that would go to football but I think there's a world where a football salary cap is in the 15 to20 million yeah um so I want to talk to you just generally roster Construction in a salary cap era where you really have 85 85 guys you've got to spread money across in some way what's the best way to do that yeah and I I don't think anybody has the perfect answer I don't think there's a magic formula that works for every team um I don't think we can go to the NFL and look at how they pay players and say we should do that at the college level um you know they have a CBA they have teams that you can game the rookie wage scale and get a cheap great QB out of the draft and um I think in general it's worth recognizing that how you win college football games is from a dozen you know you need 30 guys so if you're you don't want to pay all 85 the same that's rule number one you know you shouldn't pay everybody the same um You probably need about 30 guys that you're paying more and it's going to be exponential where you're going to pay your best players the most and you need to be okay with paying uh you know your bottom 50 players significantly less and if they want to walk they can walk and you need to have a strategy for being able to replace them or incentivizing them to stay until they see their big payday um it's a pretty tough question and I've seen you put you've got a chart on that right kind of just what's the um that's one I've seen you put out before just the expected value of kind of the top end of your roster versus the bottom end of your roster yeah you want me to share that one yeah let's put that one up here's your 85 players on the team down here and then this is the fraction that each of them contributed in a single season to your positive production that year and that's from Sis's basically points above replacement metric so your number one player probably was so impactful he accounted for 20% of the positive value your teams created that year and a lot of that's going to be your qb1 um but then you'll see it's also your cornerback one linebackers um you know running backs they have a lot of value there and some of this is just how um sis computes impact it's much harder to measure the impact of an offensive lineman and a defensive lineman versus a quarterback so there's a little bit of bias there but in general you know you could look at snap counts too you know 20 to 30 guys are mainly going to be the same dudes who are seeing the field you know play in play out um and so you want to make sure to win a championship if your goal is just to win a championship in a single year you want to maximize the talent of 20 or 30 players um and really make sure you get the most bang for your buck so you know is that going all in on senior older guys um is that going all in on a few Elite recruits out of high school every cycle and you know backloading with three star Talent um it's kind of tough to know exactly how you want to do this and it probably looks different for every team um but in general I'd say quarterback let's see do I have it yeah I've got it here this an interest this a pretty nice one um so this is two things but for for our talk the black box is looking at how high school recruiting rankings turn into points on the field and these are the position by order of importance and it says offensive tackle linebacker running back defensive end those are places where recruit ratings historically turn into onfield points at the highest rate um and then QB's further down here um it's not you know a perfect metric because teams that usually recruit well at offensive tackle usually recruit well at quarterback to so it's tough to untangle those probably you want Elite Talent at all of them um but I think this is just kind of a few things to keep in mind so it's up to me I want an Elite Talent at quarterback I want Elite Talent at offensive tackle linebacker cornerback and then probably for me I want wide receiver too I think those guys uh make a huge impact yeah a little bit we can talk about how yeah go go ahead I was going to say that that leads into my next question a little bit is um you know one thing I've seen around uh Florida fans right now right now Florida does not have a quarterback committed there's thoughts that they're going to take a shot at a couple guys and if they don't get one they can go in the portal I think I've heard you say portaling for a quarterback is not a bad strategy right quarterback is not one of the positions where we absolutely have to go get a high school guy to get somebody quality right yeah yeah and I think you know I don't think with this pass cycle we saw a lot of quality at a lot of different positions but I think quarterback running back wide receiver those are typically the positions we see enter the portal at the highest rates and they have that's what's here in the bar the grass right yeah yeah these bars are you know this is a couple years old now uh but this is the rates the relative rates each position enters the portal so the average is this red dotted line here and so QB is much higher you know it's roughly like a third or quarterback recruits enter of the portal there's a ton of QBs in there and if they've got stats from their previous program you know that's great you can use that to predict it for but you know we've seen Joe bur we've seen guys win the Heisman we've seen guys win national championships there are there is abundant portal talent I think one of the things you need to think about is most of those portal QBs need two years they peak in their second year um their first year is usually okay pretty good and then we see that next year is really when they take a big step so I think one of the hopes is we see that for Merz this year yeah and you know we could go ahead and get into Florida's or roster because that's kind of oh what I want to ask on the portal versus high school there are certain positions that you know obviously you'd rather go get your uh it's it'd be great to be able to go get an elite tackles but they're not always there now Florida was able to get something we'll talk about them in a little bit uh but that's much harder to find typically so um but yeah let's talk about Florida's roster now so you mentioned it Merz will be in his second year in the system um you know last year it was kind of after he signed on there was a lot of you know not it was not a super well received uh signing uh but you know watching him last year before the season he kind of lacked some consistency and I thought he was pretty good for Florida last year so um yeah I agree what are your thoughts on him and kind of uh what they were able to do offensively to kind of get the roster where it is right now yeah so I think we saw that let's just let's do a quick season recap let's go there so let's make sure we're on the same page so we got this is the adjusted offensive EPA and defensive EP EPA per play so this is basically uh on average how many points was each play that your offense and defense was on the field worth um and then you know we adjust it for the opponent quality and Florida's down here in the bottom right which isn't a a terrible place to be but it's not great it's definitely below expectations so we're to the right of this dotted line we had an above average offense which was good offense played pretty well and we had a below average defense our defense was pretty bad like Georgia Tech bad and I think one thing we'll kind of see is a lot of our opponents are living right now up here in this upper right box of good offensive offense and defense and and so that's tough when you're not a well-rounded team it's tough to compete with teams that are and I was looking back at the previous season and it is pretty similar I think 20 A's first year the defense has just kind of the offense has been above average both years to pretty decent to bordering on bordering on good and then the defense has been bad the entire time so yeah and we saw um in general we had a good passing offense so now this is looking at just the offense with passing on the X and rushing on the Y we had an above average passing offense which is good um that's one of the more predictive things you can have in college football and our rushing offense was just average um which isn't great considering how much we ran the ball um but also you know could have been below average so pretty good offensive profile um by no means were we you know Elite like you know the L LSUS Georgia um you know Ohio States Oklahoma but we're still pretty good and then defense we had the opposite we were a bad passing defense and our average rushing defense and being a bad passing defense is very much not something you want because it is something that carries over game to game it is predictive game to game and uh you get gashed pretty heavily for it and I think that's what we saw so generally the numbers line up with what we saw with our eyes good passing offense Fair rushing attack Fair Rush defense bad pass defense kind of with that in mind you know we we knew where our roster was at the end of November and I tweeted this out this one on the left so that chart this chart of positive team production now that's broken out by position so QB running back wide receiver tight end tackle Center guard and then position on the depth chart so this is qb1 and this is your backup QB this is your running back one running back two running back three and what you can kind of see from this is your qb1 is going to be responsible for most of your team production somewhere between five and you know 22% and so you need to have somebody pretty good penciled in here and at the end of November I tried to pencil in a guy for all of these different boxes that we can see so we got Merz up here and lagway that's pretty good QB room running backs fine we've got Johnson web I had Carol here in November and I think I started to get worried when I got down to this wide receiver room because really it's Wilson question mark and then hoping Gan and myelle would come through and this is where we can kind of start comparing to to present day because I think this is where the staff I think wide receiver is one thing I want to talk a little bit more about because I thought the staff did a good job um recognizing this Gap and filling it and that's kind of something we've struggled with the past two years you know we've gone in you know to these off Seasons with obvious gaps on the roster and have kind of just been like oh well our guys will develop and this was one of the first years where our staff was like Hey you know we've got a gap on the roster let's try and go out and get a guy and uh they went out and got a couple guys like I really like Badger and Dyke and I think being able to count on them for your WI wide receiver two and three and taking some of that pressure off Jee and miselle to develop you know hopefully one of them hits um but I thought that was really good you know similarly you know at tackle you know we had this Gap after Austin Barber and they went out and got two guys they got crenchaw Dixon Emanuel who I I like both of those ads a lot um and then you know takes some of the pressure off waits to be a contributor you know we've got Slaughter that's pretty good good we lost some guys in the interior line but you know I think we can move around some guys like George now he's not having to be a tackle for you and then you know we're gonna have to rely on the interior o line for some development there um with Harris and love it but it's not out of the question I mean interior o line it's not a bad place to be able to rotate people and I I think there's also I think there's also a possibility of you know whoever is the odd man in that tackle group maybe kicking inside too so yeah fun funnily enough so heard Billy n and this was kind of the last I think the last thing I put out was hearing him speak at a clinic and he he said you know we had we started we were playing guards at tackle last year um so you know we've already seen one move um Barbera wasn't full go for spring so I don't know if it's already they've already got him penciled in to move inside or if that was more off the cuff and he was really just referencing George uh but that's one I think that's one to watch yeah and I think it mainly was George but yeah I like our offense overall so much better than than you know we have in the in the years past um and I think you know we had a pretty good offense last year and I think we have the potential to make a big step up next year you know with you know BS year two as a as a transfer that's potential for a big step up you know we've got three wide receiver options which is so much better than just one or two you know when you've got three you start getting tough to defend it stinks we don't have etn because I think if we had an explosive player like him I think you know you'd look at this offense and be like we can win games I still think this offense is going to win us games um but I'm not as confident if if we had a guy like him yeah defense I think there's more question marks which is frustrating because we're in year three of this um but I did like you know we had Shamar got J Shamar James as as linebacker one and there's was an obvious Gap here and we ended up losing Williams in nuner too so this linebacker room's looking pretty weak in November and across most of the portal season but going out and getting a guy like powered that you're like okay that that can be our lb2 that's great I'm fine with Wingo being an lb3 and then counting on maybe Robinson Graham one of these young guys to get some time that's fine um you know a guy like Graham getting him on the field in like third down or something that could be fun um you know similar safety I liked this a lot you know we basically had castle and and Thorton as guys come back they got put in I what I think was a bad position last year um and now you've got three new guys who can who can fill in this Gap and take some of that pressure off who have experience who should be pretty decent you don't have to go three for three on your portal ads but it's just recognizing a a roster Gap and filling it in um CB I would have really liked to have have kept Hill um you know I only expected to get one of Hitler Marshall back and I I think Marshall Moore that's a pretty good one two I'm fine with that U I'd feel better if we had Hill too but you know hopefully one of you know Denson Jackson dejon one of those guys can kind of round that up I would have liked maybe another portal ad here and we'll see maybe Bridges slides over um but yeah that's kind of my feelings on the on the DB side and then love all the dees the defensive ends were bringing back you know losing princ Ley stinks you know he's another one of those guys princ Ley and Hills that are that are SEC Cal SEC caliber guys like keeping them on your roster that would be great um but I feel pretty good about our defensive ends you know sat Boon they're pretty solid and then Collins and CC both both played well and for being your three four option there that's fine cam Jackson feel really good about him and then getting a guy like slackman who can be potential dt2 take some of the pressure off Banks and lions to be your guys so um just in in general like the whole portal approach just way happier with it this year yeah and I'm I'm really interested to see how um kind of the final returning production numbers shake out because I looked at it earlier this year and Florida's this is the most returning production Florida's had since 2019 overall yeah uh and offensively yeah since 2019 by far so this is the most returning production napors had um by far in 2022 and 2023 overall they were in the hundreds in both offense and or overall and offense so this will be kind of the first year that and that's something they've been touting is snap counts snap counts snap counts um and that is that is uh I did run those as well but um it's there's so many more and yeah I know you have some data on kind of the receiver side of it there's so much more experience in the system uh which I think will be helpful and then you bring in some experienced guys in the portal that should be able to kind of hit the ground running yeah and I I think what's frustrating is you know I can understand us having bad returning production for you know NP Year's first year guys leave when you change coaches you know we should have had that figured out for last year um but it is nice to see it does seem like the staff has adapted and and figured figured out what this new landscape looks like and built a more complete roster this year that that's my new that's my new pet theory is that if you aren't good immediately because the the whole thing was you know forever hey give a guy time and that was what we were told apier was told he's going to have time to fix it in especially now in the free transfer portal era if you don't win immediately you're just going to be in Perpetual year ones because guys are just going to leave and you're going to be starting over you're to replace a bunch uh so I think the fact that they were able to retain so many guys uh they lost a good bit but they were able to retain a lot of guys and bring in some experience that'll so yeah I think we we net came out on top on the portal which you know that that kind of surprised me because it was looking pretty dire there for a bit yeah especially with the guys they lost in the high end like yeah they lost some you know some really really good players and you end up I think they ended up with a top 10 portal class yeah um I saw somewhere maybe maybe 247 so from the to end up there after kind of where it started uh is a pretty good close now obviously they gotta go and win some games but yeah let's talk about the receivers because I really liked um the receiver ads we'll we'll just kind of do the the positive numbers um I think this is like a a cool chart for optim ISM so this is on the x-axis this is how many yards the wide receivers and tight ends had who are on your roster now in the previous season and then this is how many yards they gained per route so far to the right means you got a lot of returning production and then higher you are you have a really lot of high quality returning production so you know 21 22 23 we both had low returning production and we had a lot of middling quality returning production we didn't really have many Elite guys um and then 24 this is kind of where we were shaping up is this Dot and then we added Badger so we got a ton more returning production and this dot up here is if rather than using Badger and dkes 2023 numbers if we use their 2022 numbers we have instead of 2023 those guys both of them went off in 2022 so if we can get that type of performance from them this is a pretty stack team we have a lot of returning production and a lot of high quality returning production really the only thing comparable was 2019 2020 and those were some really good receiving cores so I think you know I feel good about our wide receiver returning production and the quality of dyke Badger and Wilson I love those three guys and I feel confident in Merz in Year too um and I think if you're confident in your passing offense a lot of things can shake out positive for you so and we'll need it yeah uh I'm excited to see what Ron Roberts does but I don't think that's something you can quite hang your hat on just yet uh so yeah I think the offense is obviously G need to be uh firing on all cylinders for Florida to kind of have a chance uh uh and one of those reason I I did want to talk about DK I know he had um he had kind of a lackluster spring game and uh but I was able to I know you have uh he only had a a couple catches yeah yeah I was I was able when I I was able to go to practice I went to the coach's Clinic again this year which is always really good um and I was able to watch some practice and he was a guy that constantly was like a third down guy um he made a bunch of plays that day when they were doing third down situationally Merz found him over the middle uh three or four times so I think he'll serve a role and I think he'll be helpful yeah uh I think it was somewhat his I think his Effectiveness maybe hopefully is more of what I saw in practice and what we saw in the spring game yeah I think you know you kind of there's a is an interesting chart so this is targets per route so this is basically how much QBs like the guy you know how much does this guy get open and then this is yards per catchable Target so when a ball gets thrown to them how many yards they generate and pure SS right here so this is a guy who he gets a pretty good amount of targets and when he gets the ball he's he gets yards so this is a guy we got to replace and we went out and got Dyke who his 2022 number is very similar to Pi then we got badger who this is 23 numbers Badger was just a high efficiency Yak machine um you know pretty shallow passes that's what he was getting he was getting shallow passes and he was turning them into yards um and honestly I think that fits with you know between Dyke Badger Wilson they all kind of similar skill sets you know none of them's a true X um they're all a little bit bit more um efficiency explosive Yak type guys but you know you look at what Wilson or what Merz does well and it's generally he passes the ball short you know at a really high rate he takes these officient CL these efficient passes he's very good at executing them he's less good downfield you know eventually you got to make explosive plays I think we have three explosive wide receivers um even if they're not your true exes that you're throwing deep balls to I'm hopeful we can we can generate some explosive plays with those guys and I think it does ultimately compliment mertz's skill set yeah he hit a he hit a couple deep crossers in practice that were really nicely thrown um and and we saw that that big play to Wilson in the spring game so hopefully I'd imagine that's kind of his point of emphasis this year I think he's even mentioned it in a couple interviews that yeah we want to be able to push the ball downfield and I think uh The Tackle group they brought in will probably be helpful in that as well so yeah I mean and you know the tackles we got this PFF but you know we now have three tackles that are among the highest graded in the SEC um that's a great that's what you want so um went out and got got some dudes and we needed it because Merz was pretty bad at taking sa sacks last year yes um you know some people pin it on Napier's offense but you know you and I have been looking at it for two years we saw the same plays executed by Anthony Richardson you know look much different from the same plays executed by Grant Merz where Richardson was deep shot deep shot deep shot I'm focusing on on the the Deep ball here and Merz is much more I'm going to take the shorter efficient you know routes on this combination yeah I I think we ended up we looked at every at one point last year we looked at every sack I think it was maybe through the by we oh yeah yeah maybe after I think we kind of came to conclusion that about 25% of it was on Merz yeah like if you were blame so he he could throw the ball away he could you know there are some things he could help clean them up but I think those guys being a little better up front will help him a ton too and uh they're gonna need it because let's talk season outlook to end here um yeah let's do it we I think both of I like I feel that Florida will be better than people think I think I don't think they're going to be they're not a bad team but unfortunately they play a really tough schedule and you might have a lot of toss-ups in there and those are kind of you know they can go either way that's why they call tossup so let's talk a little bit about Florida's schedule this year and and their outlook for the season after talking you know is the roster they put together good enough to make a bowl game and I think you know first off I'm on this before we start explaining on this I think I'm on the same page I think Florida is better than people expect um but I think we have a lot of tossup games and it's tough when you start doing the math you know if I give you 12 coin flips and and you got to get eight heads to keep your job like that's hard the problem is there's only one yeah maybe two slam dunks on the schedule agreed all right so what we're looking at is I'm going to post this tomorrow but this is the market derived team tiers so this is that's what these are these tiers right here and then the numbers underneath them are a power rating and so what you can do and what I did was took the Vegas win totals right now Florida's at 4 and a half and you can take the win totals for every team and you can take the schedule of every team and you can figure out how good Vegas thinks they are and ultimately come up with a win expectancy for every game and back into a power rating for every game um and or for every team and and so Florida's power rating comes out to be 10 I think a little bit low um Georgia's at 30 and so what this is is against an average FBS team how much would you be favored by Georgia's passes you know the sniff test I think they probably would be favored by four touchdowns against an average FPS team which was like your two lanes um poises you know Virginia um they're probably getting four touchdowns three or four and then Florida's only 10 above that I think Florida's probably should be somewhere like 13 or so problem is you know almost the whole schedule's above us you know we looked at that yeah and we looked at that graph of you know all of our opponents finished in that top right we've been everybody we're playing is just in a really good spot right now these are pretty stable programs um you know teams like FSU that have kind of turned it around a little bit or Miami that have had a few good years of recruiting you know Tennessee that might have a good system you know Kentucky that has some stability and then we're playing the two hardest teams in the country in Texas and Georgia which is brutal um catching ol Miss and LSU in potential up years although I'm not quite as sold on LSU as maybe Vegas is same with f same with FSU Tennessee um I think they could be a little bit lower you know these are probably a little bit in my mind more true coin flips but you know the problem is what we what we talked about you have 12 games and 11 11 of them are at best coin flips you know you're going to turn it into five and a half wins you and is that good enough for Napier to keep his job and you know you look at this schu and it's brutal um you know having UCF in Miami in the same year when they're both pretty good um you know top 25 or just outside it quality is is really hard um we have the oh I don't think I I've got it on here but basically what what I can do is this is our projected winds right here and so if I take that Vegas power rating and I say you know it's reasonable for biggest to maybe be off on the Gator by two standard deviations on that power rating how many wins do we get and so seven could potentially get to seven wins um and that's without luck or fluky things which college football has those so you know seven wins just by Vegas being off on the gator seems about right um and then I think you know with some luck maybe getting a eight but it's tough it's a it's a brutal schedule um let me uh let me see if I can pull up quick you know I think one way to easily conceptualize uh the coin flip thing is just look back to last season right like yeah would have probably went one and two like South Carolina game easily could have gone the other way on the other end yeah Arkansas and Missouri could have easily gone the other way so you go from winning seven games and feeling really good about yourself or winning four and that's kind of the nature of it if you're in a lot of close games um you know Napier's record in close games at Louisiana was really good but I think it's more maybe a little bit more random I'd guess as as we get into tighter games than totally skill-based but uh I don't know I I haven't quite heard anybody really say which way to think about that no and I think generally you just got to kind of appreciate the college football's a little bit fluky and that's why we watch it yeah that's what that's what makes it exciting is you know I can't the spreadsheet numbers I'm going to put up here aren't going to be perfectly predictive and that's what makes it fun that's why we like watching it you know um if it was watching people flip coins we wouldn't actually watch it but you know the excitement of not knowing how it's going to come out is what makes it fun um I think here's some more context for just how tough our schedule is yeah so here's our power rating here on the bottom and then here's our average opponent's power rating and we are Far and Away the toughest schedule um you know we play an average opponent with a power rating of 13 you know we're playing an average opponent that's roughly Auburn and uh Miami quality and top 25 quality so our our opponents are are good um top 20 top 25 teams and that's year that's week in week out so just keep that in mind if we lose some games um the next hardest schedule is USC at you know 10ish basically USC would have to play their entire schedule away only away games for it to be as hard as ours and then you know M Miami or uh Michigan you know Oklahoma Georgia they've got some tough schedules UCLA but you know they're not you know Five Points you know five points is a ton when you're talking about this U college football and you know it's just ridiculous um I think Florida's got to be smarter about scheduling going forward you know it's brutal that we're gonna have the same SEC our SEC slate is really tough and we're gonna have the same one in 2025 and that that's really hard um and so are we're going to measure Napier's success in wins and losses I think you can a little bit um I don't think anybody's expecting him to go 12 and0 against this slate but you know if we were a top 10 to 15 team instead of a backend top 25 team you know we're probably feeling a lot more confident about this season um you know Florida's here at this team power rating round 10 we should be over here you know we should be much closer to 20 and we shouldn't be counting on Vegas being wrong about to get us there we should we should have demonstrated this you know over the past couple years and I think you know Napier had some missteps in his early recruiting and portal strategy and just roster construction strategy that you know we're feeling a couple years later and I think that's hard um yeah I think the year one portal stuff is like the original sin of his tenure that's like that's the thing kind of hanging a cloud over everything and I I would love to get because you here kind of you read some things you hear some things that maybe when he first came in they had money guaranteed to guys and there wasn't a lot other money left that that was one rumor I heard that you know guys in the roster were guaranteed money and basically if you send them pack into the portal they already had signed you know contracts whatever with the collective if you send him pack into the portal you weren't getting more money so it's kind of like I could get rid of these guys and not bring people in or keep them see what I got that was one rumor that would explain some of the inaction the first year uh but if not yeah that's like that that's really the issue you got to hit the ground running out it so that cycle set the tone unfortunately we looked at I mean we talked about this maybe December looking at Texas and Texas flipped that roster I think they ended up losing 40 guys you know net 40 they they basically whole team gone uh and took some huge they took High School classes that focused on trench players that then paid off years down the line and they went out and got guys like Quinn yers and and really just were selective the guys they did keep from the previous tenure basically they went 100 % on um and you kind of compare that to Florida we kept a lot of guys around who weren't very good um I think getting paid yeah and we were paying them and and we were very slow to flip the roster I think Napier in general has done stuff pretty slowly um yeah you know it's okay to be deliberate if you're GNA be right it's tough to be slow and make missteps and then I think you know you know I get frustrated because I think one of the only times he's gone fast is when he let the coaches go before early Signing Day and we've talked about that that's a great thing to do for the coaches give more time to find a job that just helped to blow up that class and yeah man I just feel like we can't catch a break sometimes yeah that's that's and interesting kind of an interesting parallel the team other team I covered USF uh their coach recently gave uh an interview but you could see it like they we talked to him about it last year they turned over the roster like Colorado did they they had like 40 or 50 guys out and like totally flipped it and he talked about it recently and his thing was I wanted to get the team as good as fast as I could and then use that to recruit high school players so he like I went hard in the portal the first year and then use that it show proof of concept and then go after then use that to recruit high school players and then fill in with the transfer portal as needed so I thought that was kind of seemed to be the exactly right strategy and and they made a bowl game and now they got the number one recruiting class in the G5 and they're kind of humming uh I mean all it takes is I really think Napier if he nailed the portal ads you know from the cycle you know if those guys hit this is a good team and you know maybe we don't win 12 games but I think we go bowling if this team if those portal ads hit I think we can get to eight um I think we can be a top you know 15 team and that's what you need against this schedule so if Florida gets to eight uh they they probably would have an outside chance of the playoff depending on what the eight were yeah is what's great this so Florida gets to eight people got to be very Happ with neor and and I would be very impressed with with this team yeah I think it'd be a great so let's uh we're shooting for eight that's that's the goal this year I I mean really a bowl game game I mean six starting to be happy with game a bowl game is all right we can we can keep the experiment going I think but yeah exactly so Bud thank you so much for jumping on always provide awesome stuff for us awesome data awesome analysis so I appreciate you jumping on with me and talking a little Gator football yeah I enjoyed it thanks all right see you