The Alligator Army Weekly Open Thread, Vol. CLII

Florida being 2-2 is really not surprising.

I didn’t do win shares this year — sorry, been a little busy — but I considered rushing them on the Saturday that Florida played Utah and realized I would have baked in a lot of uncertainty and pessimism about the Gators’ depth, probably cancelling out my bullishness about Anthony Richardson. My guess is that I would have assigned numbers under 0.5 — the 50 percent chance — to all of Utah, Kentucky, and Tennessee, with the numbers for the Utes and Vols probably closer to 0.3, and I know I would have done 0.9 or 0.95 for USF in the middle.

Add those up, and by that metric, I would have had my seasonal expectation for Florida at this moment as a 2-2 team.

But pressed on how that would have come to pass, I probably would have predicted a narrow loss to Utah, a narrow win over Kentucky, a blowout of USF, and a narrow loss to Tennessee. One out of three ain’t bad, but one out of four isn’t great — even if the underlying understanding that Florida could be significantly weakened by even one injury (see Miller, Ventrell) or by Richardson having off nights has held up well.

Maybe that’s the lesson of this September in regards to this team, though. Maybe we have the broad strokes about what Billy Napier inherited from Dan Mullen and can do with it this season right, but will still be surprised by coming results. I’d probably be okay with that for a variety of reasons: I’d take a weirdly close game with Missouri, say, if Florida can really throw a scare into Georgia, and might sacrifice a blowout at Texas A&M for a convincing win over what looks like a resurgent Florida State.

All I really know is that the road to 2-2, far more than the record, suggests more of a wild season is in the offing. And if Florida can’t be a conquering champion or whatever, I’m okay with a little chaos.