Remember that Muschamp lost many more games the prior year with those defensive and offensive players. The people with no axe to grind realize that UF had no OL but the offense without an offensive line still scored enough to upset #2 ranked Ole miss and top 20 team UT.
Attrition whittled the UF OL down to nothing by season's end. You probably focus on the games when UF went against dramatically deeper Bama and FSU when the UF OL was kaput and Grier was suspended. Bottomline is Mac did more with those defensive and offensive players than Muschamp did the prior year. That is why the critics were saying Mac had no chance to win the East his first year. He did. .
2014: 5 losses
2015: 4 losses
The only difference in those seasons was the brief appearance of Will Grier, which JM had nothing to do with. If anything, McElwain kicked and screamed the entire way to his taking the starting role. Grier gave us a win over ut and OM(as opposed to a road game at Alabama, who'd been our Western draw in 2014) and helped us do enough to best Mizzou. Then, beasts that we were, we held off a coachless Usce team and didn't lose a cupcake to a monsoon(which cost us an 8th win in '14), to make the difference in record.
By the time we finished 2015, we were as impotent as we'd been in 2014. The record--again, aided by an inherited player, a lesser West opponent, and better weather--simply appeared as if we'd improved dramatically. In retrospect, we hadn't, and facts on the ground support that.
