SI:AM | Florida’s Top College Football Programs Are in the Toilet

Can they right the ship?

FSU could not have dreamed up such a nightmare start to their season. / melina myers-usa today sports

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. Should I really be surprised that Shohei Ohtani has a real chance to record a 50-50 season?

In today’s SI:AM:

🏈 Week 1 in the books
💰 What happened with Aiyuk and the Niners
🏌️‍♂️ Scheffler wins again

Doom and gloom in the Sunshine State

It’s a bad time to be a college football fan in the state of Florida. Well, at least it’s a bad time to be a fan of one of the state’s biggest public universities. After the first week of the season, you’d have a hard time finding a bigger disappointment than the Florida Gators and the Florida State Seminoles.

The Seminoles’ season is off to a nightmarish start after they followed up last week’s loss in Ireland to the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets with a home defeat at the hands of the Boston College Eagles on Monday night. That gives FSU the dubious distinction of being one of just two teams in FBS with an 0–2 record (joining the New Mexico Lobos). Things aren’t much better for the Gators, who were stomped at home by the Miami Hurricanes, 41–17, on Saturday.

Florida State’s poor start is the bigger story. The Seminoles aren’t just 0–2, they’re 0–2 after having been big favorites in both games. They’re the first team in the last 45 years to lose their first two games of the season as a double-digit favorite, according to ESPN. And FSU has been completely impotent on offense in those two losses, having scored a total of two touchdowns.

It’s a horrendous start for a team that went undefeated in the regular season last year and was controversially left out of the College Football Playoff. Replacing starting quarterback Jordan Travis was always going to be tough, but adding Oregon State transfer DJ Uiagalelei was supposed to be a quality solution. After a disappointing career at Clemson, Uiagalelei showed improvement with the Beavers last year. But the offense has been stagnant under his leadership in the first two games. FSU is 8-for-26 on third downs (30.7%) and is averaging 5.0 yards per play after averaging 6.3 last season.

“I’m just sick [about] how the season started. Obviously tonight I failed in preparing the team to be able to go out and respond tonight,” coach Mike Norvell told reporters after the game. “The things that were necessary for us, the things we talked about, things we emphasized, obviously in all phases we were not able to execute.”

The good news for FSU is that the expanded 12-team playoff offers a path back to relevance. Under the new playoff format, the five highest ranked conference champions earn automatic berths. The Noles’ two early losses would have essentially eliminated them from playoff contention under the previous four-team format. Heck, they couldn’t even get a spot in last year’s field with zero losses. But if they’re able to right the ship, they can earn a guaranteed spot in the playoff. That won’t be easy, though, since both of FSU’s losses were against conference opponents. But the ACC doesn’t appear to have any standout teams this year and each team will play eight conference games. It isn’t out of the question that FSU could run the table and make the conference title game at 6–2.

Miami might be the best team in the ACC—and it’s definitely the best team in Florida right now. The Hurricanes dominated the Gators in Gainesville on Saturday, cruising to a 41–17 victory while gaining more than twice as many yards of total offense as Florida did.

Florida State’s slow start is alarming because of the highs it reached last year. Florida’s is grim because of how terribly things have gone for the Gators over the past several years and how there appears to be no end in sight. After three straight New Year’s Six bowl appearances from 2018 to ’20, Florida fired Dan Mullen after a 5–6 start to the ’21 season and replaced him with Billy Napier. Napier had built a strong program with the Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns, winning double-digit games in three straight seasons, but it’s been slow going at Florida. The Gators went 6–7 with a loss in the Las Vegas Bowl to Oregon State in 2022 and 5–7 last year—just the third time in the last three decades that they failed to qualify for a bowl game.

The trouble for Florida is that things aren’t going to get any easier this season. The Gators will play Samford, an FCS team, on Saturday. That should be an easy victory, but on the other hand, it was a hairy 70–52 win over Samford in 2021 that was one of the final nails in Mullen’s coffin. After that, the Gators get Texas A&M at home as they begin their brutal SEC schedule. That schedule really heats up beginning on Oct. 12 on the road against Tennessee. After a home game against Kentucky the following week, Florida begins one of the toughest stretches of any team in the country, with games against Georgia, Texas, LSU, Ole Miss and, finally, Florida State. What will both teams look like when that game rolls around at the end of November?

Georgia rolled to victory over Clemson on Saturday. / brett davis-usa today sports

The best of Sports Illustrated

• The new AP college football poll will come out later on Tuesday. Here’s what Mike McDaniel thinks it will look like.

• Pat Forde looked at a few of the most impressive debuts by freshmen and transfers in Week 1.

• Albert Breer has a great breakdown of what transpired between the 49ers and star receiver Brandon Aiyuk.

• Here is Mitch Goldich’s annual look at the most likely Week 18 Sunday Night Football flex candidates.

• Tom Verducci wrote about how the Brewers are riding a small-ball approach to a division title.

• Bob Harig was at East Lake in Atlanta, where Scottie Scheffler wrapped up a remarkable season with yet another win.

• The 49ers placed rookie receiver Ricky Pearsall on the non-football injury list after he was shot in the chest in an attempted robbery.

• Joey Chestnut broke his own world record in his Netflix hot dog eating contest against Takeru Kobayashi.

The top five…

… things I saw last night:

5. Boston College quarterback Thomas Castellanos’s quote after beating Florida State.
4. Castellanos’s powerful touchdown run for the first score of the game.
3. Giancarlo Stanton’s 25th homer of the season. He’s the only active player with 25+ home runs in 10 seasons.
2. Gleyber Torres’s diving play for the final out of the Yankees’ win over the Rangers.
1. Shohei Ohtani’s three steals against the Diamondbacks. He’s well on his way to the first 50-50 season in MLB history.