Take Two: Can Florida's McElwain already be on the hot seat?

Take Two returns with a daily offering tackling a handful of issues in the college football landscape. Rivals.com National Recruiting Analyst Adam Gorney lays out the situation and then receives takes from Rivals.com National Recruiting Director Mike Farrell and a local expert from the Rivals.com network of team sites.

RELATED: Lawrence, Fields or the field? | Godfather & Gorney podcast

Jim McElwain is in his third season at Florida and in the first two years, he went 13-3 in the SEC regular season before losing both SEC Championship Games to Alabama.

So is it completely ridiculous to even broach the topic that he could be on the hot seat and things just aren’t working out for him in Gainesville? It’s probably too early for that kind of talk, but there is absolutely an added layer of scrutiny with such a poor start to this season.

There are off-the-field legal issues that seem basically out of McElwain’s control and that has hamstrung the offense somewhat, but still the Gators have looked hideous offensively for a long time and there doesn’t seem to be any marked improvement around the corner.

That’s especially befuddling because McElwain built his reputation as an offensive coach. Now he has a team averaging just 23.7 points per game and the Gators have only thrown for touchdowns all season.

Seventeen points against Texas A&M, loss. Sixteen points against LSU, loss. Seventeen points against Michigan, but both touchdowns were scored by the defense. A last-second Hail Mary was needed to beat struggling Tennessee at the Swamp.

McElwain is not headed out the door — the thinking could change if Georgia clobbers them in a couple weeks — because he’s taken his team to two-straight SEC title games. To fire him would be surprising.

But Florida’s lack of any offensive production cannot go unnoticed and the blame lies squarely on McElwain at this point.

“To many Florida fans and ex-Gators football players, yes, he is on the hot seat. Fans can be fickle though. Practically speaking, I don't know if I would say his seat is hot, but it is certainly warming up.

"It isn't just these two close losses at home that has brought us to this point. Yes, he has won the SEC East in back-to-back years, but the book on him is that he did that while being carried by a defense that was mostly recruited and signed by Will Muschamp. What he was brought in to do, besides win games, was to fix the offense, which was a laughingstock under Muschamp.

"To this point, he has headed offenses ranked Nos. 112, 116 and now 105 so far this year. Considering his background as an offensive-minded coach combined with the skill position talent available to be recruited in the Southeast, that simply is unacceptable. How hot his seat becomes depends on how the rest of the season goes. If Florida loses five or six games, he may dig a hole he can't dig himself out of.”

“They’re 3-3, they look horrible and they pulled out the Tennessee game on a ridiculous last-second play. I watch that team every week either live or on film and I don’t see anything changing offensively. They’ve got a shifty freshman running back, that’s nice, but the quarterback play has not improved, the downfield vision is not there and he’s still trying to do too much with his arm. They don’t let him do a lot because of all those factors.

“They play very conservatively and now they’re just losing at home to average football teams. LSU is an average football team and Texas A&M is an average football team. It’s not pretty at all and then you factor in the recruiting where you don’t see a lot of these big difference-makers lining up to go to Florida, you have to wonder.

“Hot seat might be too much of a dramatic term, but scrutiny is starting to come into play. If you look at those two coaches who matched up Saturday in Gainesville - McElwain and Kevin Sumlin - if you asked me which one is doing a better job, it’s Sumlin, and Sumlin is the guy on everybody’s hot seat.”