It was an ugly affair on Saturday in the Swamp, where the No. 19 Miami Hurricanes bested the Florida Gators, 41-17, to give the home team its first home-opening defeat since 1989.
Unsurprisingly, USA TODAY Sports’ Paul Myerberg named the Orange and Blue to his list of “losers” on Sunday following Week 1’s opening action. Suffice it to say, the team simply did not show enough on the field to warrant any real positive takeaways and the head coach’s hot seat is getting even hotter after the embarrassing loss.
“The clock is ticking on [autotag]Billy Napier[/autotag] after an ugly, hard-to-watch 41-17 loss at home to Miami showed just how far the program has fallen in his third season,” Myerberg begins.
“In a must-win game against a bitter rival, the Gators were barely competitive. The schedule was always going to be a problem: Florida is slated to play eight ranked teams, including five ranked opponents in a row to close the regular season.”
Coming into the matchup, both head coaches dealt with similar struggles in the first two years at their respective schools, but Miami was able to hoard a cache of talent this offseason that put Mario Cristobal a few steps ahead of Billy Napier.
“While the Hurricanes have clearly taken a step forward thanks to additions such as new quarterback Cam Ward, who threw for 385 yards and three scores, that the Gators were whipped in the Swamp is the strongest hint to date that Napier’s time is numbered and that this year’s team could be just the second since 1980 to lose eight or more games.”
The long story short is that the Gators are going to have to pick up the slack from their disappointing performance on their home turf or else things could get worse before they get better. They will get a chance to recalibrate against the Samford Bulldogs next weekend before opening the 2024 Southeastern Conference schedule the following Saturday against the Texas A&M Aggies.
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