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Usually, it is wise to wait until the end of a season — or perhaps into spring practice — to project what a football team will look like the following year. In the case of the 2017 Florida Gators, who stand at 3-3 (3-2 SEC) and are closer to flirting with bowl eligibility than they are contending for a Southeastern Conference title this season, perhaps this is the right time to wonder aloud how this team will be assembled in 2018.

Yes, Florida does have a bye this week to get healthy and prepare as much as it can for No. 3 Georgia. The problem is that the Bulldogs are running on all cylinders right now and look poised to bludgeon the Gators for really the first time in 20 years. (UF is 13-5 against UGA since 1998 and has not lost a game by more than 12 points).

With all of that in mind, let’s see where things might stand in 10 months.

Head coach

Barring total and utter disaster, head coach Jim McElwain is keeping his job into next season. While he has now officially found a spot on the hot seat after leading consecutive losses in The Swamp for the first time in three years and fourth time since 2010 (it had not happened since 1988 before that), he will remain in that chair and may even earn a one-year contract extension for a recruiting purposes (though unlikely). Truth be told, the Gators have simply invested way too much into the McElwain era to give up on it this quickly with the coach facing this much adversity.

McElwain’s chosen quarterback in all three of his seasons has played six healthy games or fewer. Will Grier got suspended a year for performance-enhancing drug usage and then transferred (whether he was pushed out is moot now). Redshirt junior Luke Del Rio hurt a knee early in the 2016 season and then both of his shoulders before being sidelined; it was decently clear that McElwain knew Del Rio would be a better option than redshirt freshman Feleipe Franks in 2017 but wanted to give the youngster a try because the team’s ceiling is only so high with Del Rio.

Couple that with the team’s nine indefinite suspensions — including to starting juniors wide receiver Antonio Callaway and running back Jordan Scarlett — and myriad of injuries to top players, and McElwain doesn’t have a horseshoe but a hand grenade stuck somewhere in his office. An extremely young and inexperienced defense is missing two veteran defensive backs as well as a star defensive lineman and is starting as thin a linebacking corps as one could imagine. A lot of that falls on poor defensive recruiting since he took over the program, but nevertheless, just because something is an excuse does not mean it can occasionally be legitimate — and missing one-quarter of your players in a given season is legit adversity.

Just as Will Muschamp was given a year to bounce back from 4-8 — including a home loss to Georgia Southern — McElwain will get another chance despite him not being a direct hire of new athletic director Scott Stricklin. But make no mistake, failures in 2018 of Muschamp proportions will lead to change because Florida cannot afford to wait any longer on turning this program around.

Offense

Coaches: This is the biggest mystery facing the Gators in 2018, and it of course starts with offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier. The fact of the matter is that Florida’s offense has been terrible for the better part of a decade now, and the Gators hired a supposed offensive genius in McElwain to fix it. That has not happened. There are two trains of thought here: either Nussmeier is the fall guy, or he and McElwain are truly tied at the hip and McElwain believes his mantra of the team’s woes purely being an execution problem. While that does undoubtedly play the biggest role in Florida’s offensive struggles, the play calling and offensive game management deserve questioning as well. Nussmeier does get more blame than he deserves most of the time, but a guy who helped Alabama set school records in nearly every offensive category in 2013 should be way better than this. If the Gators offense gets healthy and continues to mire in mediocrity, Stricklin may make McElwain’s decision for him. As far as the assistants, they all return.

Suspensions: The second top story will be whether Callaway and Scarlett, two presumed starters, will be around next season. Normally this would be on the top of everyone’s mind, but as Florida looks headed to playing the entire 2017 campaign without these two, their eligibility would be a bonus. Unfortunately, this is also a tough nut to crack because so much remains unknown. Assuming both are indeed charged with third-degree felonies and offered pre-trial deferments, chances are they will be made eligible ahead of the season. Callaway and Scarlett could both decide to jump to the NFL rather than stay in school, and though their respective draft stocks would take massive hits — Callaway from Day 1 to Day 2 (he would hope) and Scarlett from potential Day 2 to assured Day 3 — it could be a prudent move, especially for Callaway, who cannot stay out of trouble. It is for that reason that I think there’s a split here with Callaway playing his last down at UF as Scarlett returns to the team to save face, improve his draft stock and remind evaluators of his ability. McElwain would seemingly be OK with accepting either or both players back, and having Scarlett in the fold would be a big boost for the offense.

Quarterback: Franks and Del Rio will both be eligible to come back, though Del Rio looks headed for graduation and/or a move into coaching. Incoming five-star freshman Matt Corrall will be overhyped and an expected competitor for the starting job, which will go to Franks. Future redshirt sophomore Kyle Trask and redshirt freshman Jake Allen will also be involved, giving McElwain four healthy scholarship quarterbacks — all of whom he recruited — and his strongest room in four seasons.

Running back: With Scarlett back and future sophomore Malik Davis showing out in 2017, the one-two punch will be set for Florida. Junior Lamical Perine and sophomore Adarius Lemons will spell the aforementioned players with Mark Thompson graduated, but McElwain will have to convince Perine that he will move back into a starting role as a senior in 2019. Four-star incoming freshman Dameon Pierce will redshirt.

Wide receiver: Callaway and Brandon Powell no longer on the team officially turns the reigns over to future junior Tyrie Cleveland and sophomore Kadarius Toney. Redshirt sophomore Rick Wells transfers, while four-star incoming freshmen Jacob Copeland and JaMarr Chase — along with sophomore Daquon Green — push and possibly supplant juniors Josh Hammond and Freddie Swain for their spots on the depth chart. As with quarterback, depth at wide receiver is suddenly an incredible strength.

Tight end: DeAndre Goolsby graduates, and future redshirt seniors C’yontai Lewis and Moral Stephens consider moving on after being underutilized for nearly their entire careers. That puts sophomore Kemore Gamble and redshirt junior Kalif Jackson into bigger roles with incoming four-star freshman Kyle Pitts pushing for serious playing time out of the gate.

Offensive line: As long as no one transfers, Florida returns nearly a dozen scholarship linemen save for left tackle Martez Ivey, who heads into the 2018 NFL Draft and gets selected early. Incoming four-star freshman Curtis Dunlap pushes to start out of the gate.

Defense

Coaches: Unless any head coaching jobs open in the state of Florida — UCF’s Scott Frost and South Florida’s Charlie Strong could both be on the move (and you never know about FAU’s Lane Kiffin), though Strong departing is less likely — defensive coordinator Randy Shannon returns for his second year at the helm and makes significant progress coming off a 2017 season that was very much a trial by fire campaign for a handful of freshmen and second-year players. Defensive line coach Chris Rumph, who was promoted to co-defensive coordinator and received a raise as such from the Gators, also sticks around as do the rest of the assistants.

Defensive line: Florida loses Taven Bryan, Cece Jefferson, Jordan Sherit and possibly redshirt sophomore Jabari Zuniga to the draft and graduation but fills in right behind them with a talented slate of linemen already on the roster. The Gators currently have an extremely weak recruiting class coming in at this position, one that must be added to in a major way if they hope to fill in the depth and maintain a healthy rotation behind those players.

Linebackers: With two seasons of game experience under their belts, future juniors Vosean Joseph, Kylan Johnson and David Reese finally see it click. Coupled with contributions from maturing redshirt sophomore Jeremiah Moon and other youngsters, the linebacking corps begins to find its shape again under Shannon. Incoming four-star freshman David Reese creates jersey identification problems as sharing a name with the active Reese creates more-than-should-be-written offseason stories about their identical names.

Defensive backs: Nick Washington and Duke Dawson both graduate and leave for the draft, and Joseph Putu joins them off the team, but redshirt senior Marcell Harris gets granted an additional year of eligibility following his Achilles injury and returns for a sixth season. Florida’s defensive backfield is the thinnest it has been in decades from a depth perspective with only incoming four-star freshman Amari Burney likely capable of playing next season. Future sophomores Marco Wilson, CJ Henderson, Brad Stewart, Brian Edwards and Shawn Davis begin a true reformation of DBU with juniors Chauncey Gardner and Jeawon Taylor taking massive steps forward.

The defense as a whole is better than it was in 2017 but flips some of its problems, struggling to get as much pressure at the quarterback but being stronger overall in middle and defensive backfield.

Special teams

Coaches: Special teams coordinator Greg Nord is canned. If not, McElwain is blind or simply does not care about special teams the way most coaches in the nation — and his predecessors at Florida — do. While the legs of UF’s specialists have been tremendous, the coverage units in all four phases of the special teams game have been awful. That’s completely on Nord, and McElwain needs to see and understand what everyone else who watches the Gators play has known for more than a year: Nord has to go. Florida is on the verge of not returning a kickoff or punt in a season after doing so in 12 consecutive years. With the amount of game-breaking talent on this any UF team, that’s an absurd thing not to do. Forget even returning a kick for a touchdown, the Gators have barely returned the ball at all — and when they do — it’s never for any significant gain. This should be an absolute no-brainer decision.

Kicker: Eddy Pineiro will have a year of eligibility remaining and could stay for his redshirt senior season. He could also leave early for the NFL and start making money while getting his degree at a later date. This is truly a coin flip. Future redshirt senior Jorge Powell, who was 1-for-2 on field goals in his career before suffering a season-ending injury in 2015, would still be on the roster should Pineiro depart and has enough talent to take the job. But Florida would most certainly recruit another scholarship kicker.

Punter: Exit Johnny Townsend, one of the best booters in program history, and enter redshirt junior Tommy Townsend. Yes, they’re related. The younger Townsend would take over for his brother after transferring to Florida from Tennessee in 2016. The former U.S. Army All-American would start.

Returners: Who knows? The Gators have not settled on a non-Callaway returning, and even him holding the role was questionable due to his value for the team. Perhaps a more seasoned Adarius Lemons becomes the primary man in his sophomore season.

Schedule

Florida will host Charleston Southern, Kentucky, Colorado State, LSU, Missouri, South Carolina and Idaho at home, playing Mississippi State cross-division on the road along with Tennessee, Vanderbilt and Florida State at their homes. Of course, the Florida-Georgia game remains in Jacksonville, Florida. This schedule is intriguing for a number of reasons, primarily because McElwain will face an improving CSU team (currently 5-2) that he left for the UF job, and former Gators offensive coordinator Dan Mullen will get to host his former team. Talk about a double potential for disaster in those games — both of which occur in September as Florida will play five games in the first month of the season, three in the SEC and two (Tennessee, Mississippi State) on the road. Yikes.