The 2023 season came to an unceremonious end last weekend at the hands of the Florida State Seminoles, who beat the Gators in the Swamp to give their rivals a losing record this fall.
One of the areas — and there were many — where the Orange and Blue faltered was on defense. Despite starting strong against FSU the corps once again collapsed in crunch time, leading to the 24-15 defeat.
The Athletic’s Max Olsen has been tracking the stop rates for all 133 Football Bowl Subdivision schools this year and Florida’s trajectory has been consistently downward. With the 12-game schedule now in the books, the Gators are ranked No. 122 with a 53.4% stop rate resulting in 2.65 points allowed per drive.
That is going to have to improve significantly if Billy Napier and Co. are going to pull this program out of the doldrums.
For the time being, that is the end of Florida football for the Gator Nation until the Orange and Blue game. That intrasquad exhibition will take place inside Ben Hill Griffin Stadium sometime this coming spring with a date and time yet to be announced.
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