Dooley has been on this some. While I like Dooley more than some here and listen to his pod cast, I think it is important to look at these 9 excuses:
1. Antonio Callaway, JR, WR: Certainly a loss of a big play maker and a legit excuse.
2. Jordan Scarlet, JR, RB: A good players, but arguably not any better than other RBs UF has. His lost has cost UF nothing and is no excuse.
3. Jordan Smith, RFR, DE: UF has great DE depth. No excuse.
4. Richerd Desir-Jones, RSoph, DT: He might have played, but he is no more than a rotation guy probably. Small excuse.
5. Keivonnis Davis, JR, DE: He was seemingly in the DE rotation, but again UF is fine at DE and DE depth.
6. Kadeem Telford, OL, FR: Dooley says he might have been in the rotation this year. I say losing a true frosh OL is not excuse for a coach.
7. James Houston, FR, LB: UF needs LB depth. UF is playing a walkon LB. Still this true frosh missed his SR year of high school with a torn ACL. I see his loss as little excuse.
8. Rick Wells, RFR, WR: The loss of Callaway and Cleveland's recent injury make this loss a little bigger. Still not much of an excuse to me.
9. Ventrel Miller, FR, LB: Another bit of missing LB depth. So a bit of an excuse to me.
So in football terms there are maybe 2/3 excuses here. Callaway was certainly a loss and I thought in his "contract" year he was likely to have a big year. The two LBs might be a loss as they could have provided depth like this years starters did last year. Still to me this hardly amounts to 9 excuses like many not just you have said.