Florida football season preview 2020: Record predictions, depth chart analysis, breakout players
By John Buhler
Florida football season preview, including record predictions for the 10-game SEC schedule, depth chart analysis and breakout players to watch.
Will 2020 be the year Florida football gets back to dominating the SEC like it did a decade ago?
The Florida Gators are certainly trending up in year three of the Dan Mullen era. After seven combined years of mostly frustration with pockets of excellent sprinkled in between, Florida finally got it right at head coach by appropriately replacing Urban Meyer with one of Meyer’s former disciples. Florida ended the 2019 college football season as an unquestioned top-10 team.
The 2019 Gators went 11-2 overall, 6-2 in SEC play and defeated the Virginia Cavaliers in the Orange Bowl. Despite losing starting quarterback Feleipe Franks early in the season to a broken ankle, Kyle Trask came in and played marvelously, enough to the point where Franks had to leave the program and transfer to the lowly Arkansas Razorbacks for his final college football season.
Trask developed quite the rapport with tight end Kyle Pitts, who was named First-Team All-SEC. Florida’s defense was ranked No. 2 overall last year, headlined by a pair of First-Team All-SEC performers in defensive end Jonathan Greenard and cornerback C.J. Henderson. While Florida looked great at times, it dropped a pair of games to two of their biggest rivals.
The Gators had no chance against the eventual national champion LSU Tigers in Death Valley. That Bayou Bengals team went a perfect 15-0 as one of the greatest single-season teams in college football history. However, the loss that remains the most painful is the neutral-site defeat over in Jacksonville vs. the hated SEC East rival Georgia Bulldogs.
Georgia won by a touchdown along the Banks of the St. Johns River to win the SEC East for the third year in a row, only to get absolutely shredded by LSU in the SEC Championship game in Atlanta. While most teams in the Power 5 would have killed for an 11-2 record, a New Year’s Six bowl victory and a top-10 finish, Florida isn’t most teams. They’re good, but when will they be great?
With the 2020 college football season hopefully on its way, let’s take a look at how Florida will do in its 10-game, conference-only schedule, who will be their big-time playmakers this year and how will have a breakout season for the Gators. Here is the official Florida football 2020 season preview. Will this be the year it all goes right for Mullen’s program? Let’s find out now.