The world got to see both sides of the 2021 Florida Gators at South Florida on Saturday.
In the first half, No. 13 Florida dominated on both sides of the ball and took a 35-3 lead into the locker room.
The offense piled up 373 yards and scored touchdowns on five consecutive drives at one point. The running game was efficient, and both quarterbacks were superb in the passing game.
The defense settled down after allowing a field goal on the Bulls’ second possession and forced three punts, an interception and a turnover-on-downs to finish out the half.
That version of the Gators looked like one capable of challenging Alabama next week.
Then came the second half, and the Gators looked like a team that could struggle to win eight games.
They were outscored 17-7 after the intermission. The offense failed to score on four consecutive possessions despite not punting during that span. The defense gave up yardage in chunks and couldn’t get much pressure on USF’s quarterbacks. Even the special teams units made some mistakes.
In the end, UF’s strong first half allowed it to cruise to a 42-20 victory over the Bulls (0-2) inside Raymond James Stadium.
Despite winning the game convincingly on the scoreboard, the Gators know that they’ll need to play much more consistently moving forward if they’re going to achieve the goals that they’ve set for themselves.
“I didn’t think we were very efficient in the second half,” coach Dan Mullen said. “We made some critical errors. Now, we did some good things there. We played a lot of guys, as we want to do early in the season and see where we’re at, give guys opportunities. When you give guys opportunities to get on the field – and everybody wants chances; everybody wants opportunities – and if you get it, though, you better live up and play to the Gator Standard.
“I think our guys have great attitude and energy. I think with the execution with every single play, the detail that goes into every single play and how exact you have to be on every single play, we have a lot of guys missing those things. We’ll say, ‘Hey, I did it right four out of five plays,’ and that’s not the Gator Standard. The Gator Standard is doing it right five out of five plays with relentless effort.”
The Gators (2-0) opened the scoring on their second possession. Emory Jones connected with Rick Wells for 20 yards on a crossing route to start the drive.
Running back Dameon Pierce took over from there, picking up 16, 20 and seven yards on three consecutive carries to score his third touchdown of the season.
South Florida gave UF’s defense some trouble on the ensuing possession by going up-tempo and throwing quick passes to neutralize the pass rush. They drove 75 yards on 17 plays, but quarterback Cade Fortin missed an open Bryce Miller in the back of the end zone on third-and-goal. USF settled for a field goal.
As planned, backup quarterback Anthony Richardson entered to start UF’s third drive of the day, and he picked up right where he left off against Florida Atlantic last week.
On his first play, Richardson faked a handoff, started to roll out to the right, stopped and hit a wide-open Jacob Copeland in stride on a post pattern for a 75-yard score.
The Bulls then used a 24-yard pass from Fortin to Xavier Weaver to get into UF territory again, but pressure from Brenton Cox caused Fortin to woefully underthrow an open Latrell Williams on fourth-and-3.
The rest of the second quarter turned into a giant game of “Anything you can do, I can do better” between Jones and Richardson. Jones dropped in a dime to Xzavier Henderson on a go-route for a 35-yard touchdown.
“I saw him man-on-man, looked the safety off, and he won,” Jones said. “He made a great catch.”
Richardson faked a quarterback draw and fired another touchdown pass to Copeland, this one from 41 yards out.
Jones finished the scoring for the half with a 33-yard touchdown run.
The two-quarterback system was working nearly flawlessly, and it looked like the Gators would enter next week’s SEC opener against No. 1 Alabama with a ton of confidence and momentum.
“It’s crazy because we both didn’t know that that was going to happen,” Jones said. “We just go with the flow every week and every drive. We go with the flow. [Mullen] might call me in. You’ve just got to be ready to go out there and take advantage of the opportunity.”
Unfortunately for the Gators, the rules of football state that you have to play all four quarters.
The Gators started the second half decently well, forcing USF to go three-and-out and moving the ball 22 yards on their first three offensive plays. Then, on the fourth play, Jones stared down Justin Shorter and threw a pass right at Bulls defender Mekhi LaPointe. LaPointe intercepted it and returned it 50 yards to the Florida 10-yard line.
“I didn’t think the guy was going to run out that fast, but he did,” Jones said. “I was trying to get it out of my hands quick before he could make a decision, but he made a great play, and I made a bad decision right there.”
South Florida converted Jones’ mistake into points when Spencer Shrader drilled a 32-yard field goal.
On the next possession, Jones completed a 15-yard pass to Henderson on a rollout and rushed for gains of four and nine yards to advance the offense into USF territory.
On second-and-1 at the 37, Jones didn’t see that Trent Whittemore was open until it was too late. He tried to force the throw anyway, and it was intercepted by Brock Nichols.
“That was another bad decision out of me,” Jones said. “I was waiting for another guy to come open, and I was late getting back to Trent. I shouldn’t have thrown that ball. That was a terrible decision.”
South Florida’s backup quarterback, Timmy McClain, led his team 43 yards on five plays for their first touchdown of the season, with Jaren Mangham scoring from one yard out to cut the lead to 35-13.
Mullen chose to stick with Jones despite the back-to-back interceptions. The running game got them into USF territory, but Wells couldn’t come down with Jones’ fourth-down pass for a turnover-on-downs.
Richardson reentered on the next drive and got the Gators inside the 10 after completing a beautiful 36-yard pass on the run to Copeland. Richardson’s helmet came off on the play, so he had to come out for one play per NCAA rules.
Instead, Mullen opted to give Jones the rest of the series. Jones threw into quadruple coverage to Whittemore on second-and-goal and threw incomplete to a well-covered Nick Elksnis on fourth-and-goal.
Richardson returned on the next drive and outran everybody on the field for an 80-yard touchdown. He tweaked his hamstring on the play, though, and didn’t return. He was seen with an ice pack on his leg after visiting the trainer on the sideline.
Mangham rushed for another touchdown on the Bulls’ final drive to complete the scoring.
The defense only gave up 140 yards in the second half, but they allowed the Bulls to produce some big plays and score a couple of touchdowns after being shutout at NC State last week.
“I think it really just came down to being detailed in what we were doing, giving up a couple of plays here and there,” linebacker Jeremiah Moon said. “So, I think we’ve really got to lock in and focus on those details, and I think we’ll be ready.
“I didn’t think we played terrible. We gave up some points toward the end of the game, but that’s what I mean by we need to be more detailed and things and just having our eyes right and just being physical at the point of attack, and then I think everything will take care of itself.”
Offensively, the Gators racked up 666 yards, including more than 300 both through the air and on the ground. That’s the fifth-most yards in a game in school history. However, you’d expect to have 60 or 70 points on the board with that many yards. Instead, they only scored 42 points because of Jones’ sloppiness in the third quarter.
Mullen was pleased to get the win and see his team play at an extremely high level in the first half, but he’s not close to being satisfied with the performance he saw on Saturday.
“We can improve on everything,” Mullen said. “We played pretty solid defense in the first half. We had the one drive that I wasn’t real pleased with in the first half. Second half, we came out in some situations, made some stops, made some mistakes defensively at the end of the game. Offensively, we came out, and we made a bunch of explosive plays and kind of really did well in the first half, even though we were not as clean and efficient as I wanted to be.
“Kicking game, made some mistakes. Obviously, gave up a huge return, made a poor judgment in fielding a kick and trying to run it out. Our kickoffs need to get better. Overall, do I like our attitude, our energy, our effort of what we played with? Yes. Did our guys take care of what they needed to to win the game? Yes. Do we need to get a lot better? Yes.”