Injuries leaving Florida Gators thin on defensive line

The Florida Gators defense is playing as well as any unit in the entire country this season but the formidable group will be without several key playmakers when they head up to Columbia, South Carolina this week.

Joey Ivie, who missed the game against Vanderbilt this week will be out with an undisclosed injury and senior defensive lineman Jon Bullard are listed as “out” and “doubtful” this week. In addition, Jordan Sherit will miss the first half of the game after he was ejected for targeting near the end of the Vanderbilt game and Thomas Holley will miss his fourth game in a row and sixth game of the season with a hip injury. That will leave the Florida Gators very thin along the defensive line, the group that has led the way for the defense as a whole.

“It all starts up front. Nothing is possible without those guys,” senior Brian Poole said. “Really they make it easy on us when you don’t have to cover that long. Nothing we do is possible without them.”

Despite missing two games already, Joey Ivie is third on the team with 3.5 sacks. The first game he missed this season, against LSU, was the first game the Gators didn’t have a sack registered on the season.

Jon Bullard, who chose to return for his senior season, is playing the best football of his career and leads the Gators with 13 tackles for a loss.

If Bullard joins Ivey and misses the game this week the Gators will have a short crew to work with at noon against South Carolina. Freshman CeCe Jefferson will likely have to move inside to make up for the losses.

“CeCe will obviously play a bunch more,” McElwain said. “In Jordan’s case, that would just be a one half deal so we’ve got to work through that going into (the game). But we’ll have some guys step up and play good.”

Behind Jefferson, Khairi Clark, Taven Bryan and potentially Bryan Cox will be asked to handle an increased role and workload for the Gators this week.

Nick de la Torre
A South Florida native, Nick developed a passion for all things sports at a very young age. His love for baseball was solidified when he saw Al Leiter’s no-hitter for the Marlins live in May of 1996. He was able to play baseball in college but quickly realized there isn’t much of a market for short, slow outfielders that hit around the Mendoza line. Wanting to continue with sports in some capacity he studied journalism at the University of Central Florida. Nick got his first start in the business as an intern for a website covering all things related to the NFL draft before spending two seasons covering the Florida football team at Bleacher Report. That job led him to GatorCountry. When he isn’t covering Gator sports, Nick enjoys hitting way too many shots on the golf course, attempting to keep up with his favorite t.v. shows and watching the Heat, Dolphins and Marlins. Follow him on twitter @NickdelatorreGC