BATON ROUGE, La. – Florida had the deck stacked against it coming into Saturday’s showdown against No. 1 LSU, and a win just wasn’t in the cards for the Gators with starting quarterback John Brantley out and true freshman Jacoby Brissett making his first college start in front of 93,022 people in one of the nation’s toughest venues.
LSU (6-0, 3-0 SEC) overwhelmed Florida (4-2, 2-2 SEC) right from the start, forcing a quick three-and-out on defense and drawing first blood two plays later with a 46-yard touchdown strike from Jarrett Lee to Rueben Randle in a 41-11 win.
“Defensively, too many big plays,” head coach Will Muschamp said. “We’ve got to get better on the line of scrimmage.”
The Gators were down 17-0 before the offense got into any sort of rhythm, and they were lucky it wasn’t worse than that.
After Florida got a stop on third down, LSU was backed up by a couple penalties and was set to punt on 4th and 15.
The Florida return unit turned to block for returner Chris Rainey and nobody kept an eye on punter Brad Wing, who pulled down the snap and took off down the left sideline for an easy touchdown run.
But Wing was flagged for celebrating before he reached the end zone, negating the touchdown and allowing the Florida defense to hold LSU to a field goal to extend the lead to 17-0.
“We had two guys assigned for the punter. They didn’t do their job,” Muschamp said. “That’s coaching. We had two guys that were assigned to do their job and they didn’t do it, they did what they wanted to do.
“Those guys aren’t going to play in our program any more, guys that just do what they want to do when they want to do it. It’s undisciplined football, and that’s my fault, it’s nobody else’s.”
LSU added another touchdown midway through the second quarter on an 8-yard run by Spencer Ware up the middle, building the lead to 24-0.
Florida scored its only points of the first half on a 14-play, 59-yard drive. The Gators turned to running back Mike Gillislee and the Wildcat package with Trey Burton to move the ball down the field, and Jacoby Brissett made a nice third-down throw to keep the drive alive.
Kicker Caleb Sturgis broke the goose egg on the scoreboard for the Gators with a 30-yard field goal just before the half.
The Gators cut into the lead a little more late in the third quarter after the Tigers added a field goal to take a 27-3 lead.
Brissett threw a deep pass down the left sideline to Andre Debose for a 65-yard touchdown a few minutes later. The long touchdown pass was the second 65-yarder Debose has caught in the past two weeks.
The deep touchdown pass seemed to wake up LSU, though, and the Tigers drove right down the field with a six-play, 81-yard drive to make the score 34-11. LSU added another touchdown late in the fourth quarter to make the final score 41-11.
For the second straight week, Florida’s defensive line was dominated at the line of scrimmage. The Gators gave up 238 yards rushing, the highest total of the season.
“All I know is we’re playing physical,” defensive tackle Sharrif Floyd said. “We’re focused on playing more physical. We’ve just got to get started faster.”
Florida tried to air it out a little more to keep up with LSU after Brissett’s first touchdown, but a deep pass down the right sideline to Andre Debose was picked off by cornerback Tyrann Mathieu.
Brissett finished with 94 yards through the air on 8-of-14 passing with one touchdown. He also threw two interceptions and was sacked once in his first career start.
“I thought he was solid under the circumstances against a good football team defensively,” Muschamp said. “He’s going to be a really good football player for us. I think we’ve got to play better around him in some spots and create some more situations in the run game.”
The Gators didn’t help themselves in the penalty department, either. Florida was penalized 12 times for 90 yards, and a few key flags really hurt the team’s momentum.
A quieter, more reserved Muschamp met with the media after the game, but the first-year head coach didn’t have much to say when asked about any positives he could take away from Baton Rouge after his team’s second straight blowout loss.
“Not a whole lot,” Muschamp said, “not a whole lot. We’ve got to get ready for Auburn. We’ve got to get better, we’ve got to coach better. We’ve just got to get better.”
Florida will travel to Auburn to take on the defending national champions at 7 p.m. ET in a nationally televised game on ESPN before its bye week.