What Preseason Rankings Mean for Florida Gators

The Florida Gators head into the 2025 season ranked No. 15 in the AP Poll and No. 17 in the Coaches Poll. For the first time since the final year of the Dan Mullen era, they’ll start the season ranked.

It’s a major step in the right direction for Billy Napier and company. Let’s take a look at what starting the season in the Top 25 means for the program.

Winning Really Does Solve Everything

Florida rattled off four wins in a row last season to finish 8-5 overall, 4-4 in the SEC and won a bowl game for the first time since 2019. 

While simply winning helps, they picked up quality wins during that stretch, including ranked wins over rival LSU and playoff contender Ole Miss. 

The Gators are a high enough caliber program that when the wins start to add up, people start to notice. While that winning streak only earned them a handful of votes by the 2024 season’s end, it was enough to sell a sizable voting block on the 2025 season. 

Hype for DJ Lagway is Legit

It’s been a while since the Gators truly had that star quarterback. They’ve come close a couple of times since Tebow. Will Grier has those who believed he was destined to win a national championship before the NCAA came knocking, and Kyle Trask came out of nowhere to be a Heisman finalist. 

But then, there’s the hype brought on by winning over top recruit DJ Lagway. Once he got the opportunity, following Graham Mertz tearing his ACL, and ran with it. The Gators went 6-1 with Lagway as the starter and won every game he finished. 

He earned the Gasparilla Bowl MVP honor to cap off his true freshman campaign. He’s not the early favorite for the Heisman Trophy, but he’s expected to do big things in 2025. When you have a quarterback capable of it, the voters are going to listen in. 

Napier’s Long Game in Roster Building is Paying Off

It goes beyond just having the quarterback.

Those who continued to believe in him kept saying he just needed his own players. Dan Mullen’s ousting saw a talent deficit in Gainesville that Napier had to fix.

The issue with needing the time to fix a roster is that Florida is a fan base that needs to you to win now. It didn’t help that Mullen won 10 games and the Peach Bowl in his first season and Napier had a losing team. 

He was given the time to recruit, even if it looked like at times that he wasn’t going to make it, and now the roster is the best it's looked in some time. Defensive anchors Tyreek Sapp and Caleb Banks are projected to be first-round picks and Lagway has some lethal weapons in the passing game, consisting of Eugene Wilson III, Dallas Wilson, Vernell Brown III and J. Michael Sturdivant, just to name a few. 

The overhauls helped the Gators boost expectations for 2025. Now, Napier just has to win games with them. 

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