It’s halftime of the 2016 Buffalo Wild Wings Citrus Bowl and Fred Johnson can’t brings his eyes up to the scoreboard as he walks into the locker room. Michigan is only leading the Florida Gators 17-7 but the lead feels larger. It would soon get worse.
“It was a case of getting your rump kicked in,” Jim McElwain said shortly after his first bowl game as UF’s head coach. “They really took it to us on both sides of the ball.”
McElwain’s first season as the head coach of the Florida Gators came to an end in Orlando. Fellow first year coach Jim Harbaugh walked off the field with a 41-7 win and McElwain walked off angry but with a clear vision.
Two years later McElwain still harbors resentment for the way that game played out. When a question was posed the Monday before Florida would open its 2017 season against Michigan with a disclaimer that McElwain’s Gators didn’t “seem tough enough” the last time they met the Wolverines, McElwain cut the reporter off.
“Ha,” he proclaimed! “That’s an understatement.”
The teams that take the field this Saturday aren’t the same as the two that met in the Citrus Bowl. Two years ago the Gators couldn’t get anything going offensively because they were dominated up front physically. Florida’s offensive line had no answers for a bigger and physically imposing Michigan defensive front. The Wolverines lost four starters on the defensive line after last season but former No. 1 recruit Rashan Gary and future first rounder Maurice Hurst, who has 11.5 TFL in 2016.
“They’ve got some talented players,” offensive lineman Tyler Jordan said. “No. 3 Gary, explosive kid, fast kid. And the two inside guys are very powerful, they stay low, they use good technique. So we’re going to have to get low to move them out of there.”
The offensive line has been heralded as one of the Gators best units on the team and they’ll face a tough task right out of the gate.
“The last two years, being here with Coach Mac, a lot of people have been talking about you know, offense and the offensive line,” center T.J. McCoy said. “So I believe this game is going to be a big game for the offensive line, just proving to people that we’re not the same group we’ve been for the last two years.”
The line has its own motivation but the team has one of it’s own.
Having a marquee matchup to start the season is new for the Gators, who put a nation-long 27-game season opening winning streak on the line Saturday. Not only have they been focused all offseason because of the magnitude of the game, they still remember January 1, 2016.
“They beat us pretty bad, man. They beat us pretty bad, and myself some of the guys have been using that as motivation throughout spring ball and fall camp and now that we’re playing them on Saturday,” defensive end CeCe Jefferson said. “We’ve just been using that as motivation to go out and just execute. I’m so excited, man. We just can’t wait for Saturday to get here.”