Football has a funny way of presenting the ugliest of performances that still somehow produce the desired outcome. For the newly crowned SEC East champions, the Florida Gators performance Saturday afternoon was just a bit out of key and their tone was not quite where it needed to be; yet the sound of SEC East champion is still music to our ears.
If there is anything that could be written about this team, despite some of its obvious flaws, is that they do not back down from challenges and have consistently “Overcome the adversity on the field”. Often times we overvalue style points and undervalue winning. The rankings will come out tomorrow evening and these Gators may not have any positive movement, some teams may jump them, but right now that does not matter. Pollsters and committees do not have metrics or analytics to measure heart and character.
“We just fought through adversity and, like I said, we took every play as a new down and played fast and played smart with the ball and we needed a game like that,” said quarterback Treon Harris after the game on Saturday.
This will serve as another learning experience for the Gators and more growth points have been exposed, but I recall plenty of champions having to win games like this, and there is no reason to be down on the remainder of the season.
The Florida offense is not as explosive as TCU, their quarterback is not Trevone Boykin, Connor Cook or Paxton Lynch, and Florida surely don’t run the ball like LSU. But this group of Gators have guaranteed themselves an opportunity to play for championship rings. The four teams picked to finish above Florida in the SEC East are a combined 16-18 with a conference record of 9-17. Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Georgia, Vanderbilt and South Carolina will be sitting home on December 4th singing the same song of ‘only if’s’ that Florida sang the last five years and asking the same questions of why.
Sure, this is probably not the time to troll other fan bases or teams, considering the overall performance from the Gators against Vanderbilt, but when the game winning field goal by Austin Hardin split the uprights all the frustration from the previous 58 minutes of the game went away with a collective exhale of relief and we knew the odds of Johnny McCrary leading a game winning drive against the Gators defense was slim to none. The Gators achieved their goal of reaching Atlanta and it was time to celebrate.
Jim McElwain and staff will have this week to correct the issues from the game. In his post-game presser McElwain was well aware that things need to be corrected.
“Obviously, we have a long ways to go on our offense,” he said. “Don’t take anything away from what they did on defense, they took it to us upfront. They didn’t do anything to us that we didn’t see, other than beat us to the punch”
The Gators were uncharacteristic in committing four turnovers. The offensive line had very little push that contributed to an inept running game; Treon is still growing as a quarterback and so on and so on. All those areas can be improved to be more productive as bigger games approach.
The one consistent lesson that college football teaches us year in and year out, is that it is played on a week-to-week basis. No week is determined by the previous and does not guarantee anything in the future. In a season where there is no elite team head and shoulders above the rest, anything, and I mean anything, can happen. Each week has become as unpredictable as a Donald Trump speech and just plain craziness has become the norm.
What does this all mean for the Gators? It’s simple, stay in the moment, do your best to thrive in the moment and as they did yesterday, survive the moment. McElwain has been preaching the gospel of now, all season long and that does not change moving forward. I don’t believe disproving the preseason predictions is good enough for this team nor is reaching Atlanta. This team see’s something special on the horizon and they are going after it. There is something to be said about belief in oneself and that alone can get anyone through challenging situations.
Yes, the margin for error seems to have gotten smaller, but that does not change the expectation every time they step on the field, and that’s to win. Saturday in the Swamp was not pretty by any stretch of the imagination, but who would have imagined a trip to Atlanta? This team continues to win and winning has been, and will always be the number one priority.
One thing we can appreciate about Coach McElwain is that he is not boring us with coach speak. He and his team know what’s at stake.
“When you are on a championship run, let’s call it what it is, we are on a championship run,” McElwain said after the game. “Sometimes there are games like this and champions figure out ways to win them and these guys are the SEC East champs.”