Florida AD Jeremy Foley says he’ll evaluate football team after the season
Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley said Friday that his plan was to see where the Gators football team was after the end of the season.
Florida is 2-1 after a 42-21 loss to Alabama last week where its defense gave up 645 yards and the offense, to put it mildly, didn’t play well either. Coach Will Muschamp’s Gators were beset by injuries last year and went 4-8. But even if the season trends downward in 2014, Foley doesn’t sound like a man who would make a coaching switch during the season.
“You never judge or evaluate a program based on one game or one season,” Foley said on the Open Mike Show on 740-AM in Orlando (via ESPN). “That’s just not how we do things here. We’re going to evaluate where we’re headed – where the players are, how is recruiting going, what type of staff we have – (and) are we better?
“That’s going to be plain for all of us to see, but it’s also going to be played out over the course of 11 games and we’ll see where we are when we get to the end of the season.”
Florida is playing 11 games instead of 12 because of the termination of its season opener against Idaho due to a downpour.
Foley’s comments are not unexpected. While the Gators looked horrific against Alabama (don’t let the 21-21 halftime score fool you), Florida has a chance in a wide-open SEC East. Every team in the East has at least one loss and five teams have conference losses. As crazy as it seems, Florida winning the division isn’t incredibly farfetched.
Of course, that would take improvement from the defense and from QB Jeff Driskel, who was a wretched 9-28 passing for 93 yards, a touchdown and two interceptions. WIth eight games left in the season, there looks to be plenty of time, this year at least, for Muschamp and the Gators to make it happen.
The Gators are off on Saturday before playing Tennessee on October 4.
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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
