A lot of people both in Gainesville and around the country ramped up expectations for the 2026 Gators after their comfortable win over then-top 5 Ole Miss. Major media figures either alluded to or straight-up used the B-word (back) and the P-word (playoff) around the team.
Then the Gators spent an afternoon in Columbia, Missouri. The usage of those words has plummeted since.
Teams are seldom as good as their best games make them look, nor are they as bad as their worst games make them look. UF isn’t “beat Ole Miss by 24” good, nor is it “lose to Missouri by 28 or 35 depending on if you count the garbage time TD” bad. Both of those are possible outcomes since we did see them happen, but they’re also not the most expected outcome for either contest. Teams can be volatile in the first years under new head coaches, if you haven’t heard.
I suspect that UF and MU are actually fairly close in their average performances. I don’t think either played their average performance, though. Florida played near the bottom of its potential, while Missouri played near the top of its potential. If you imagine overlapping probability distributions, the Gators were in the left tail of theirs and the Tigers were in the right tail of theirs — leaving plenty of quality distance between them on that particular day despite the middles of their bell curves being close.
How do I know? Going into the game, tackling was a big bugaboo for the Tiger defense. The story on that side of the ball was that bad tackling was a problem. Florida has big, strong players like Jadan Baugh and Dallas Wilson who are perfectly able to break through a poor tackle attempt.
Instead, MU suddenly was a very sound tackling team. College players are inconsistent, and we usually use that term as a euphemism for, “without warning, they can look like they forgot how to play football”. It can also mean, “for one afternoon, they play nearly perfect before looking like they forgot how to play football the next week”.
Plus, Austin Simmons also had a terrific day where his accuracy was on the high side for him. Yes, he did have some easy throws due to defensive breakdowns. However he also had some terrific Sunday-caliber throws that really threaded a needle. In his limited extended action prior to last Saturday’s game, he’s either in the 50s for completion percentage or at 65% or above with little in between. He was in the 50s against Troy and Mississippi State this year but was at 65% against Kansas and 77% against Florida. So it goes.
The Florida coaches did their best in their midweek press conferences not to make or accept any excuses offered by media questions, but the Gators really did miss several injured players. The passing attack hasn’t been the same since Vernell Brown III went out, including in the remainder of the game against the Rebels. He has an ability to get open that others in the receiving corps don’t, and consequently his presence can free things up for others. UF may have a deep receiver room, but there’s only one VB3.
The secondary also sorely missed Bryce Thornton, who was a game time scratch after tweaking his hamstring in pregame warmups. Mizzou’s first touchdown came on a play that looked like a miscommunication but that Brad White asserted was simply a player doing the wrong thing. You don’t need to be in the official film room to see that the bad rep came from a safety who wouldn’t have been in on that play had Thornton been healthy.
There were other plays where better safety play, better communication, or both would’ve helped. The 36-yard completion on third down in Mizzou’s first drive after halftime is likely one such instance, where three DBs covered one deep slant leaving single coverage on the other.
I also think they’re missing Dijon Johnson, who barely played in Columbia. He’s still dealing with injuries, and the solid senior would certainly help compared to the uneven play UF has been getting from some of its other corners.
Beyond that, there were a lot of unusual things going on. Florida players were slipping and falling; I can’t remember the last time either Baugh or Duke Clark did so for seemingly no reason, but both did in this one. Aaron Philo missed a wide open Clark near the goal line on the first drive and instead fired a pass into traffic. Baugh missed at least two cutbacks into massive holes in the middle of the line, instead opting to try to get around the edge where Mizzou was selling out on run support. A long pass completion was negated by a penalty for an offensive lineman not being close enough to the line of scrimmage, and Jeremiah McCloud was flagged for delay of game on 3rd & 6 for clapping to hype up his teammates.
I know it was a while ago, but try to travel with me through the mists of time all the way back to late August. What were the biggest concerns during preseason camp? I can think of four.
One was the offensive line. Would it gel into at least an average unit? Because this was a group that Jon Sumrall was sounding the alarm bells about in the spring and summer. While the line had performed above expectations for a month, last Saturday’s was the line that everyone had feared. Every single starter had bad plays throughout, and there were times where the lack of cohesion in how they worked together was painful to watch.
Another was the tight end spot. It projected to maybe be the worst group on the offense. Again through four weeks, those guys played well above expectations. Against Missouri, their blocking was really not good. There were run plays where both an offensive lineman or two was being driven into the backfield, and when Baugh wanted to bounce outside to compensate, he was being met by a defender who a tight end had tried and failed to block.
A third big concern was the secondary. Well, it has never really exceeded expectations this year. The overly soft coverage against FAU was partially players’ faults for not knowing the play situation, and they gave up big completions to Auburn and Ole Miss prior to the Missouri game. As pointed out on film study videos by the Gator Nation Football Podcast and others, there were plays in earlier games where the DBs let a receiver run free but that ended in a sack or throwaway because of pressure up front. The defensive front didn’t bail them out at Missouri in that way.
The fourth was turnovers by the quarterbacks. Fortunately that one has yet to manifest in games. Philo’s only two picks this season hit the intended receiver in both hands before popping up in the air.
To be clear, the Mizzou loss wasn’t entirely on the offensive line, tight ends, and secondary. The defensive line has been stuffing almost nothing at or behind the line all season, and that continued. The linebackers had a rough day in coverage. As noted above, Philo and Baugh were not at their sharpest.
But also, the largest issues in Columbia were the foreseeable ones from August. If you had asked me to sketch out a game script back then of how this Gator team gets its clocks cleaned, it would’ve sounded basically like that Missouri game went.
So after letting hopes skyrocket for four weeks before a hard return to reality, let’s reset expectations on this team as it approaches the halfway mark.
As both Sumrall and Buster Faulkner noted this week, UF is a team that can’t fall behind by too much. They jumped out to early leads against both Auburn and Ole Miss, and that allowed them to use the whole playbook. Florida’s only decent drive of the second half (pre-garbage time) against Mizzou was the first one, down 17 with nearly the whole half’s worth of time to work with. Down 20 or more afterwards, the offense had to abandon the run with a line that was already shaky in pass protection. It did not go well.
The team is talented, but it’s not deep in experienced talent. It doesn’t have to lose many key players before it’s straight to, “oh dear, that was a growing pain for that sophomore”. This being the first year of new systems on both sides of the ball only magnifies the effect.
When they’re on, they can play with anyone and beat almost anyone. When they’re not on, they can look a lot like the team from last year that a large percentage of the roster played on. Bad habits are hard to change in one offseason.
South Carolina is talented but inconsistent — the less flattering definition of “inconsistent” I mentioned above — but they’ve generally started games hot. It may be a struggle to avoid falling behind early. That said, the Gamecocks have allowed 35+ points in all three of their SEC contests so far. If the Gator offense struggles to avoid punting again, then there’s something to really worry about on that side of the ball. And if the defense can’t come up with some big plays against an offense that has baffling breakdowns several times a game, then hold onto your hats the rest of the way.
At its best, this is the highest quality Florida outfit we’ve seen since 2020. It’s not without its flaws, and those flaws are the very ones we all saw coming before the season.
This weekend will be an excellent test to see if the new staff has instilled enough mental toughness that they won’t let Mizzou defeat them a second time. Carolina is dangerous but very beatable. If the Gators get the level of play back into the upper half of their potential, then it’ll be a good sign for the game and the rest of the season.