2025 Florida Gators Game By Game Projections

It’s August, and that means it’s time to kick off our coverage of the 2025 Florida Gators football season with our game by game projections.

Game 1: Long Island Sharks

Originally, this was supposed to be Florida A&M. The Rattlers backed out of the game, though, and Florida promptly replaced them with Long Island for a more “national” schedule. Doesn’t matter. A pay game is a pay game, and these are two programs on completely different wavelengths. If this game is within three touchdowns by halftime, Florida’s got some major league problems.

Yawn. Next.

Projection: Florida 63, Long Island 3

Percent chance for Florida to win: >99% (rounding up to 100 with the caveat that nothing is ever 100% certain after Georgia Southern.)

1.00

Game 2: South Florida Bulls

While still a far cry from an SEC caliber team, USF is a significant step up from LIU. And they’re a very real threat to turn Florida’s season upside down before it even begins if the Gators mess around. You know, like they did the last time the Bulls came to Gainesville.

True, the rosters are markedly different now three years later, a fact that slants the odds in Florida’s favor even more. But USF always gets up for games like this– and most recently had both Alabama (trailing 21-16 with 6:05 to go) and Miami (within 22-15 with 7:30 left in the third quarter) in serious situations before the talent gaps took their toll down the stretch. So I do think this game is suspiciously close for two or maybe even three quarters.

But in the end, sheer talent wins. Florida is simply too physical and too fast for USF to match up with for the full 60 minutes. It won’t be a blowout, because Billy Napier is simply not capable of doing that against FBS teams, but this should be a comfortable win that’s well in hand by the time Tom Petty blares through the Gainesville twilight.

Projection: Florida 42, South Florida 27

Percent chance for Florida to win: 99%

1.99

Game 3: at LSU Tigers

In classic SEC scheduling fashion, Florida can’t even get the full 365 days to celebrate its first win over LSU since Dan Mullen’s inaugural season. No, the SEC ships Florida out to Baton Rouge for the Jack Pyburn grudge match in week three to kick off a hellacious four-game stretch. In doing so, it marks the first time since 1984– and just the third time ever– that the Gators and Tigers will play in September.

LSU, as always, is loaded in the trenches as a result of perennially top recruiting, which will be quite the adjustment for Florida up front after LIU and USF. But unlike the last two years, Florida gets two tune-up games to work out the kinks before their first marquee game– and that should help the Gators be ready for an ultra-physical street fight under the lights in Red Stick. This should be a fun game with Garrett Nussmeier and DJ Lagway both capable of making special things happen (albeit in their own ways) and tons of talent around them that you’ll soon see on Sundays, and the first one to blink loses.

Given that LSU possesses a ridiculous 115-8 record in Death Valley night games this century, I think it’s Florida who makes the fatal mistake late to lose– but not before Gator fans get a real dose of promise injected into them that shows Napier’s team is indeed for real.

Projection: LSU 41, Florida 34

Percent chance for Florida to win: 28%

2.27

Game 4: at Miami Hurricanes

One of the biggest unsolved mysteries in college football these days is which games Billy Napier will get his team ready for, and which ones he just doesn’t give a damn about.

How Napier managed to coach himself to a tenure-opening win against a top ten Utah team in 2022, only to then make himself look like a buffoon as his team was woefully unprepared for big-stage season openers in each of the next two years, is something that should be studied by psychiatrists. Many thought out of all games Napier’s team would show up for, it would be the one that came first on the 2024 docket after a nine month layoff, with a team coached by a guy hired at the same time as Napier, and thus is always compared to. And after that didn’t happen and Florida humiliated itself on its own field– and then did it again two weeks later against Texas A&M– many thought the team would shut down the operation and quiet-quit on the season. And it was after being labeled a dead team walking that Florida came alive and looked like a totally different team.

With that said, this should be a game that Florida shows up for. Not only because of painful feelings stemming from the aforementioned 41-17 beatdown Miami handed Florida last year, but also simply because this a rivalry series on its deathbed. Last December, the CFP Selection Committee sent the message that non-conference strength of schedule simply doesn’t matter to them, and teams around the country received that message loud and clear. There’s no benefit to scheduling marquee non-conference games anymore, so teams just won’t do it. And that includes Florida with Miami, a second ACC opponent this year on top of FSU. So this is it. The score of this game will have infinitely more long-lasting staying power than 41-17 because of the memo going around the sport not to set up games like this anymore. And you’d think that would mean Florida shows up. Not to mention the gauntlet that lies ahead for Florida.

But I don’t know. The back to back weeks of facing strong line of scrimmage teams isn’t ideal, and Florida may be emotionally wound up one way or another coming back from Baton Rouge. Meanwhile, Miami has exactly two showcase games to get up for, and they’re a month apart. I’d love to be wrong, but I don’t have a super great feeling about this one.

Projection: Miami 38, Florida 31

Percent chance for Florida to win: 39%

2.66

Game 5: Texas Longhorns

After a bye, Florida returns home to face big, bad Texas. And oh, what a showcase game this figures to be.

Invincible, Texas is not: Arch Manning has some holes in his game and Texas loses several key pieces from last year’s national semifinal squad. But this is still a dominant superpower of a program with a roster that’s littered with five stars across the board, and they’re sniffing a national championship this year. So, how does Florida match up?

On a neutral field, the answer is very different from what it will be in Gainesville. The Swamp has a way of serving as an extra defender when opponents have the ball, having spooked quarterbacks of no lesser caliber than Heisman Trophy winner Bryce Young of Alabama and Joe Burrow of LSU. And that’s where this game is being played. The other thing to consider is that Texas doesn’t really need to win this game– even if they lose on Saturday to Ohio State– thanks to the new 12-team CFP. 10-2 will get you in the Playoff these days. And given the four-game gauntlet that this stray home falls in the midst of, Florida does.

So this would be an upset for Florida, in a cathedral of college football that has helped the Gators pull some memorable ones through the years. And I think they’ll pull another one.

Projection: Florida 31, Texas 23

Percent chance for Florida to win: 44%

3.10

Game 6: @ Texas A&M Aggies

Two weeks in a row of facing Lone Star State teams that buy their rosters in bulk? Sure, why not. This one’s on the road, in a place Florida is strangely familiar with: College Station, TX, a city Florida will visit for the fourth time in fourteen years after trips to Aggieland in 2012, 2020, 2022. (Insert your Georgia has never played a football game at Kyle Field line here.)

This one’s hard to predict. We’re getting to the part of the season where we have no idea what teams will look like, with injuries, benchings, and wild twists of fate all transforming our pre-conceived notions of teams into something we never would have thought possible. Marcel Reed is the Aggies’ starter at QB for now, and Florida had no idea what to do with him last year, but this Gator defense is also in a much better place now than it was then. The Aggies have some firepower in the receiving game with transfers Kevin Concepcion and Mario Craver, and a proven bell cow in Le’Veon Moss in the backfield. And beside the fact that their defense is full of former Gators– both in terms of coaches and linebacker Scooby Williams– and a former five-star recruit in Desmond Ricks, it’s hard to know what we’re going to get out of them.

So, for a prediction? Honestly, I have no idea. I’d tend to lean Florida, because the Kyle Field advantage hasn’t bothered the Gators before (2-0 all time there in front of non-COVID-depleted crowds) and because Florida’s collective experience as a team is just more than Texas A&M’s. But this is undoubtedly Texas A&M’s biggest home game of the year, too, so you can expect them to come ready to play.

Projection: Florida 27, Texas A&M 17

Percent chance for Florida to win: 64%

3.74

Game 7: Mississippi State Bulldogs

Y’all, Mississippi State is bad. Really, really bad.

You have to have some respect for the league, as Mississippi State playing SEC team after SEC team could improve their ceiling a little bit in a “trial by fire” sort of way. So this isn’t quite the sacrificial lamb that LIU is. But for all the talk about how brutal Florida’s schedule is, they were undoubtedly given a gift here: easily one of the two worst teams in the SEC comes to Gainesville for a get right game in between the back end of a brutal four-game gauntlet and then the bye that leads up to Georgia. For sure, this is overall a very difficult schedule, but the league office tossed Florida a bone with this one.

Blake Shapen isn’t terrible as a QB, and I actually think that MSU coach Jeff Lebby is a better offensive mind than Billy Napier. But he’s going to be far outmatched here simply because Napier has amassed an infinitely more talented and experienced roster. So Lebby might outfox Napier with a few play calls here or there that catch the Gators’ defense off guard, but unless MSU’s offensive line magically transforms itself into a Joe Moore worthy unit by midseason, he’s bringing a plastic spoon to a bazooka fight here.

Unfortunately, because Billy Napier has a habit of doing this, I fear this game’s final score is a lot closer than it should be because Florida races out to an enormous lead and then just bleeds the whole second half clock out. But this game should never be in danger.

Projection: Florida 41, Mississippi State 24

Percent chance for Florida to win: 98%

4.72

Game 8: Georgia Bulldogs

After another bye, Florida travels to Jacksonville for the last time in the old EverBank Field Era to finish what it started in 2024: a gritty game that they seemed in control of before DJ Lagway went down with a hamstring injury.

Frankly, this feels like the worst Georgia team Kirby Smart has had since his first season, and yet they’re still undeniably loaded with talent on both sides of the ball. Gunner Stockton has limitations, and Florida will definitely have the better QB play, but this is another test for Florida’s lines of scrimmage. We say we’re elite up front on offense with Jake Slaughter, Austin Barber, Damieon George at his more natural position, etc. And we say we’re elite on the defensive line with Tyreak Sapp, George Gumbs, Caleb Banks, and Kamran James. Well, this is where we prove it.

Because until proven otherwise, Georgia is still the cream of the crop in the trenches in college football. LSU and Miami are both really good up front, and Texas is elite. But Georgia handled Texas at the point of attack two times last year and figure to be similarly strong at the lines of scrimmage this year. That’s where this game will be won, not by any dazzling QB play from Lagway or Stockton. And I still think Georgia is better here.

But for 60 minutes, an objectively very good Florida team can play better than Georgia on the line of scrimmage. Not necessarily be better, but play better; deliver stronger punches off the snap, not get caught off balance, not get cooked by swim or rip moves, and more simply just make plays. This game has forever been Georgia’s Super Bowl under Kirby Smart, and for the first time in life, I feel like Billy Napier’s club will finally match that intensity. Georgia’s the better team, but Florida makes more things happen at the point of attack on this day and pulls the upset.

Projection: Florida 24, Georgia 20

Percent chance for Florida to win: 47%

5.19

Game 9: @ Kentucky Wildcats

This might just be the worst team Mark Stoops has ever fielded at Kentucky since his maiden voyage of 2013. Kentucky went 2-10 that year. This could be ugly.

Yes, this game is in Lexington. Yes, that place has been a house of horrors for Florida since Stoops got there, even when Florida has won. And yes, Stoops has undeniably done a great job of getting Kentucky ready for the Florida Gators, flipping the script after Florida ripped off an unprecedented streak of 31 wins in a row.

But whereas in previous years Kentucky at least had some individual players for Florida to have to watch out for– Kash Daniel, Carrington Valentine, Josh Allen, and the like– their roster just isn’t there this year. If Florida shows up ready to play in this game, it shouldn’t even be close. It will be, of course, because Billy Napier is genetically incapable of pressing the gas pedal for a full 60 minutes (or even 50), but if ever Kentucky gets too close for comfort, Florida has the athletes needed to make the plays to keep this game out of reach.

Projection: Florida 38, Kentucky 27

Percent chance for Florida to win: 84%

6.03

Game 10: @ Mississippi Rebels

Pundits point to last year’s upset loss in the Swamp as a reason why Lane Kiffin is not an elite coach. And maybe they have a point: 8-2 Ole Miss, with everything to play for, lost to a 5-5 Florida team with nothing but pride to play for. That ruined the Rebels’ CFP chances in a year where everything seemed to break their way.

This time around, things are quite different. Austin Simmons, once thought to be a possible heir apparent to DJ Lagway, is penned in as the Ole Miss starter to start the post-Jaxson Dart days. But Ole Miss has lost a ton of valuable pieces on defense, including Walter Nolen, Trey Amos, former Gator Princely Umanmielen and former Gator fourth-and-short-target JJ Pegues, meaning new names will have to arise in order for the Rebels to have a defense capable of stopping offenses like Florida.

This is also the point in the year where we all have to admit we have no idea whatsoever what we can expect. Simmons could be a Heisman Trophy winner or he could be benched in favor of someone not even on their preseason depth chart who’s comparable to Skylar Mornhinweg. Ditto that for their new defensive line, which could be filled with young havoc-makers or it could be filled with tackling dummies. We just don’t know how things will pan out. But I’ll average those extremes out and take the mean, which translates to: I think Ole Miss will be a good, not great, football team. And Florida will just be a step or two ahead of them, both in the season as a whole and on this day.

Projection: Florida 33, Mississippi 24

Percent chance for Florida to win: 68%

6.71

Game 11: Tennessee Volunteers

As alluded to in the Ole Miss game synopsis, we’re at the point of the season where we have to just go with the information we’ve got in the preseason… and acknowledge that said information could become wildly off-base as games play out.

But from the information we do have at hand, Tennessee might be in the worst position it’s faced since Josh Heupel arrived: the handpicked next in line QB to take the reins of Heupel’s offensive system was effectively traded to UCLA for Joey Aguilar. Which, if you ask anybody outside of the Tennessee fanbase, is an appreciable downgrade. There’s still some talent on the Vols’ roster, particularly five-star freshman offensive tackle David Sanders from Davidson Day, but they’ve lost key components to a strong defense in 2024 and don’t appear to have replaced them overnight.

The bottom line, though, is that this is still a Josh Heupel offense, one that’s far more detailed and frightening to deal with than Billy Napier’s 12-personnel-heavy offense with the occasional flood or mesh concept for a “surprise”. If Aguilar can even somewhat grasp the complexity of the controls he’s been given on Rocky Top, the floor of this Tennessee team remains very high– even if they do take a big step back on defense. The question is the ceiling.

And now to address the elephant in the room: Tennessee’s collective inability to win a football game in Gainesville. All streaks come to an end at some point, and we’ve seen that in the last dozen years alone: the Vanderbilt streak in 2013, the overall Tennessee streak in 2016, and the Kentucky streak in 2018. One day, we’ll see Tennessee’s losing streak in the Swamp come to an end as well. I just don’t think it will be this year.

Projection: Florida 37, Tennessee 24

Percent chance for Florida to win: 86%

7.57

Game 12: FSU Seminoles

FSU epitomizes the warning given in the prior two game synopses. You just have no friggin’ clue what they’re going to look like. They won every game on their schedule two years ago, and they lost every game on their schedule (other than California and Charleston Southern) one year ago. How are you supposed to evaluate that and make heads or tails of it?

Well, again, it goes back to the idea of taking the information at hand and doing the best you can with it. What we know is that their new QB, Thomas Castellanos, got benched on a 7-6 Boston College squad due to his poor play and quit the team. We also know that the Seminoles haven’t signed a top 10 recruiting class under Mike Norvell– ever, and that Norvell likes to hit the transfer portal hard. Which he did again this year on both sides of the ball. Sometimes that’s worked, giving them studs like Jordan Travis, Jared Verse and Keon Coleman, but more recently, it… hasn’t. And now the Seminoles appear ready to trot out a starting lineup comprised of 16 transfers compared to just six high school signees.

I have a hunch that the season for FSU plays out as follows. Alabama humiliates FSU in Tallahassee, but then the Noles rip off a bunch of wins in a row as the September and October slates are severely weaker. Then as we roll into November and FSU is again met with talented opposition– like, say, Clemson and Florida– Norvell is reminded why the transfer portal is meant to be a bandaid to heal a stray wound or two, not to spell an entire surgical roster overhaul.

You have to have some respect for the rivalry, so you can’t put this game at a 99% or even a 98% win probability. But Florida has more overall talent and far more collective experience. Unless Castellanos becomes the biggest surprise star in college football, Florida should be the overwhelming favorite simply because it’s mined its own talent for years.

Projection: Florida 34, FSU 10

Percent chance for Florida to win: 92%

And that places Florida’s projected win total at 8.49– almost smack-dab in the middle between 8-4 and 9-3. Which is pretty much exactly where I feel this team is going to be– right on the border between 8-4 and 9-3, with those two being pretty much equally likely. A close call, a bounce of a ball, or that extra inch or two on a goal line push could make all the difference between those numbers, and thus between Florida being a CFP team and not.

But the time to talk and predict has come and gone. It’s now time to spot the ball, and play the games.