Steve Spurrier believes winning season, bowl game would be successful for Florida in 2023

Florida doesn’t have the highest projected ceiling among teams in the Southeastern Conference coming into this fall. Still, if the Gators can manage to win a bowl game, Steve Spurrier would mark that down as a good year down in Gainesville.

Spurrier spoke in a recent one-on-one with ‘Inside The Gators’ about Florida’s upcoming campaign. In his eyes, a quality year for this new team would be finishing with a winning record and then going on to win a bowl game in the postseason

“I’m feeling like a lot of people. I think if we have a winning season and, maybe, go win a bowl game? That’d be a good year,” said Spurrier. “It won’t be one of those great, great years but it’d be a good year.”

Both of those marks would be seen as progress considering neither have been accomplished in The Swamp in either of the past two seasons. The Gators have gone 6-7 in ’21 in Dan Mullen’s final year as well as in ’22 in Billy Napier’s first.

While they’ve managed to extend their bowl streak to five consecutive appearances in those seasons, Florida has also lost three straight bowl matchups in the Cotton Bowl (’20), Gasparilla Bowl (’21), and Las Vegas Bowl (’22).

If nothing else, the Gators need to show progress and a step in the right direction in Napier’s second season. To Spurrier, the best way to do that would be to finish over .500 and pick up the program’s first bowl victory since the Orange Bowl in 2019.

Spurrier predicts 7-5 record for Florida in 2023

As Florida heads into year two under Billy Napier, the Gators will certainly be looking for more positive results. Despite having a top-five NFL Draft pick at quarterback last season, the program finished just 6-7.

However, at least one man Gators fans are quite familiar with sees a better result for Florida in 2023.

“I just threw out a 7-5 as probably a very in the middle of the pick type thing,” former coach Steve Spurrier said in an interview with Inside The Gators. “It could go both ways. Heck, we all know. It could go both ways. Who would have ever thought we’d lose to Vanderbilt last year? And after the big win over South Carolina? We lost two in a row and then the whole team bailed out before the bowl game, which is discouraging.”

Spurrier’s 7-5 pick would be a solid result in and of itself. If it swung to positive side of that, the Gators would really be cooking.