The Gators have had some awful defensive games over the last couple of years. They gave up a combined 107 points to Alabama and Oklahoma in their final two games of the 2020 season. They gave up the most yards in a game in program history in the 2020 opener at Ole Miss.
Most recently, they gave up 49 points and 321 rushing yards to LSU and 459 total yards and 40 points to South Carolina.
So, expectations aren’t exactly high for the Gators’ defense now under interim defensive coordinator Christian Robinson.
Still, Florida’s game with Samford on Saturday afternoon was perhaps the worst defensive game in UF history when you consider the opponent. The Bulldogs, an FCS team with a losing record, racked up 530 total yards and 52 points against them. It was the most points ever scored by an FCS team against an SEC opponent.
The first half was particularly hard to watch, so much so that Gators fans and media were basically operating under the assumption that coach Dan Mullen would be fired on Sunday. They gave up 359 yards and 42 points, the most points surrendered in a half in UF history.
Fortunately for the Gators, they were able to make a few stops in the second half, keep up their own blistering scoring pace and defeat Samford, 70-52. Those 122 combined points were the second-most in a game in Florida history behind only their 144-0 defeat of Florida Southern in 1913.
While Mullen certainly wasn’t pleased with how his defense played, he was happy to see his players celebrating a win in the locker room after three consecutive losses, the firings of two assistant coaches and speculation over his future at the school.
“I’m really proud of our guys,” Mullen said. “Been rough. Good to go in there and see them be able to celebrate to go get a win. Things didn’t always go our way today; things went the other way for us but kind of finding the way to not let go of the rope, stick together as the game wore on to win it. I’m really proud of our guys.”
Bulldogs (4-6, 3-4 SoCon) quarterback Liam Welch looked like a future Pro Football Hall of Famer. He completed 33 of 52 passes for 400 yards and three touchdowns. Montrell Washington hauled in 10 of those passes for 124 yards and a touchdown, while Jai’Rus Creamer had seven catches for 96 yards and Michael Vice had four catches for 94 yards.
The first half was an exciting yet infuriating back-and-forth affair for Gators fans. It was like watching an Arena Football League game where you’re just hoping to make one stop.
Samford went 75 yards on 13 plays on their opening possession, capped off by Washington’s 1-yard touchdown run. The Gators answered back with Malik Davis’ 6-yard touchdown run.
Eight plays later, Welch connected with a wide-open Vice for a 58-yard touchdown that saw the Gators bust the coverage and then miss a tackle near the sideline.
The Gators (5-5, 2-5 SEC) then tied it up on two plays – a 46-yard catch-and-run from Emory Jones to tight end Kemore Gamble and a 9-yard scoring strike from Jones to Ja’Markis Weston, the first touchdown of Weston’s career.
“I’d say we did a great job,” receiver Justin Shorter said. “Emory did a great job, I think. He really calmed down the whole offense. He said, ‘Hey, let’s go in there, let’s just execute and just make these plays and keep on scoring. We’ve got to go back and forth this game.’ It was a high-scoring game.”
Welch responded by hitting Jay Stanton out of the backfield for a 40-yard touchdown pass to give his team the 21-14 lead. Then Jones tied it up with a 31-yard score on a read-option keeper.
“Me and [Anthony Richardson], just getting the guys together and just let them know that we can [score] after the first quarter, after every drive, that we have to,” Jones said. “That’s what we were planning on doing anyways. But just keeping that mindset, trying to be on the attack every drive, and we go out there and executed and do what we’re supposed to do, and it worked out for us.”
After each defense finally made a stop, Welch hit Washington for 39 yards and then ran it in from four yards out on a quarterback draw to reclaim the lead for his team.
Dameon Pierce scored a 1-yard touchdown and Jones threw a 45-yard touchdown pass to Nay’Quan Wright to wrap up the scoring in the first half for Florida, while Washington returned a kickoff 98 yards for a score and Welch added a 10-yard touchdown run to give his team a 42-35 lead at intermission.
“You’ve got to give them some credit,” Mullen said. “They’re a team that’s going to score points. They score a ton of points. They throw the ball all over the place within their style. “If there’s a disappointment, it’s some guys had opportunity to make plays we didn’t make. The opportunities, a couple of missed tackles, a couple of opportunities for sacks that we didn’t make. We ended up with penalties, pass interference.
“I think there’s guys going to look at it, and, hopefully, they start to build some confidence and say, ‘Hey, I’m right there. All I’ve got to do is go make a play. I have to finish it’ and have the confidence to go make that play.”
The Gators won this game by shutting out the Bulldogs in the third quarter. After Davis’ 49-yard catch-and-run touchdown tied the game, it looked like a repeat of the first half was in store, as Samford moved into UF territory on five plays. However, Welch’s third-down pass was tipped and intercepted by reserve safety Mordecai McDaniel.
It was McDaniel’s first career pick, and it changed the momentum of the game.
“Coach said, ‘Stay high. Stay over top of every route. You may not ever know if it’s going to be a tip,’ and, luckily, it was a tip this time, and I was in the right position at the right time to make the play.
“When my time was called, I went out there and made the play. For the defense, I want to say that gave the defense a little bit more juice because they see the young guy turn up. So, when they see a young guy turn up, it’s going to turn up the rest of the guys.”
Jones threw a 7-yard touchdown pass to Gamble on the ensuing possession to give the Gators their first lead of the game.
After Ty’Ron Hopper stuffed Welch on a fourth-and-2 run, Jones threw a 13-yard touchdown pass to Pierce. That gave the Gators a two-score lead, and they used that cushion to hold off the Bulldogs in the fourth quarter.
Mullen was pleased with the way that his defense stepped up in the second half and only gave up 10 points after the awful first half.
“You could go in where we’re at halftime with a lot of yelling and screaming and finger-pointing and ‘What’s going on?’ And ‘This is terrible. This is awful,’” he said. “Or, you can come out and give up 10 points in the second half and one of them off a recovered onside kick that we even told them was coming. So, I think our guys can use that to build off.
“I said guys need to stop looking here and saying, ‘OK, hey, you need to cover somebody. You need to get a sack. You need to make the block. You need to make the run. You need to complete the ball.’ I said, ‘Hey, I need to go make a play. We need to go stop them up front. We need to get pressure on the quarterback. We need to cover their guys. We need to make plays when there’s opportunities to go make them. We need to move them with the offensive line up front.’
“Not you, you, you, you, you, me and we. We need to do this together, and we need to turn it inside and go say, ‘Hey, there’s plenty of opportunities to go make plays on that field right now. There are plenty.’”
Linebacker Mohamoud Diabate, who subtly criticized former defensive coordinator Todd Grantham after the LSU loss, said that Robinson did a good job calling plays on Saturday but that the players didn’t execute.
“I feel like we were even more comfortable with him,” Diabate said. “We were getting the calls earlier, getting them on time, and there were more simple calls. So, really, it just comes down to, once again, players coming out there and doing their job. I feel like some people might not have been as quick to do what they were supposed to do, kind of hesitant, and that just comes down to us taking care of our business and doing what we need to do.
“People just have to realize the way we played the second half, we can play like that all the time. We just have to come out with the same confidence and same swagger. Nobody should have to come in at halftime [and] yell at everybody. Everybody should be ready, as the game starts, to take care of business.”
Obviously, giving up that many yards and points to an FCS team means that there were numerous issues on defense. The defensive backs got beat on some 50-50 balls deep down the field, there were some blown coverages, they missed a bunch of tackles, and they had some difficulties getting lined up against Samford’s tempo.
They also committed 12 penalties for 94 yards as a team, including three holding and pass interference calls against cornerback Kaiir Elam and a few offsides penalties.
The special teams also contributed to the onslaught of Samford points. Washington returned a kickoff for a touchdown, and the Bulldogs recovered a surprise onside kick early in the fourth quarter that led to a field goal that cut UF’s lead to 56-52.
“They hadn’t done that all year, so I didn’t know if it was going to be in middle or to the side,” Mullen said. “We just told our guys ‘You’re not in a hands situation’ because they weren’t in the onside kick team. We said, ‘Hey, we’ve got to be ready for the surprise onside kick here.’ We moved guys up. ‘Be ready for the onside kick.’ We had three guys right there, [and] we didn’t get the ball, and that gets into guys making plays.
“We have a lot of young guys on the kickoff coverage team, so we wanted to see experience, and I think the kickoff return for a touchdown [was] obviously disappointing. But there’s a lot of guys in there, and I think we bottled it up, bottled it up, and we should have two guys on the outside. They got out of position, he broke free and ended up scoring. So, we’ll learn from that part of it.”
It’s unfortunate that the historically bad defensive performance is going to dominate the conversation in the coming days because the offense turned in a historically good game.
Their 717 total yards were the second most in a game in program history, and their 70 points tied for the 10th-highest mark in school history and the most since 2008. They averaged 10.4 yards per play, didn’t turn it over and only punted twice.
Jones completed 28 of 34 passes for 464 yards. He tied for the fourth-most passing yards in a game in school history and tied for second in UF and SEC history with six touchdown passes.
He also added 86 yards and a touchdown on the ground. He established a new Gators record with 550 total yards in the game. His seven total touchdowns tied the program record.
“The offense came out here, we executed and did everything we were planning on doing most of the game,” Jones said. “A lot of guys went out there and made plays for me. The offensive line, they played very good. The receivers went out there and caught balls for me; they made plays for me. All of them did good.”
It wasn’t a bad day for a guy who had never even had a 300-yard passing game before Saturday and momentarily lost his starting job two weeks ago.
“I think he did a great job,” Mullen said. “Missed one or two reads here and there, and you know me. I’m always pretty critical, but I thought, overall, not flinching in his ability to just kind of lead us, and you kind of see we took some shots down the field. Somehow, a bunch of time, we’re trying to take a shot downfield, they’re just bailing out of there, tough stuff underneath. [He] got us into the right checks. I know for him, it’s a confidence builder for him, how he played today.”
Pierce also enjoyed a nice game, averaging nearly 13 yards on his 10 touches and scoring three touchdowns.
Gamble led the team with a career-high 122 receiving yards and two touchdowns on six catches, while Shorter added six catches for 93 yards.
Saturday was a strange game for the Gators. How often does a team win a game by 18 points, and yet the heat turns up even more on the head coach?
That’s exactly the situation that Mullen finds himself in, though. Giving up 52 points to anybody is unacceptable at Florida, and that’s especially the case against an FCS opponent.
Mullen isn’t concerned about what outsiders might say about him.
“The criticism is the criticism,” he said. “No one’s going to be harder on me than me. I want to win. I love the Gators, and I love winning. I love competing. I think you guys know that. I’m a competitor, and I want to win. There’s nobody that’s more disappointed, OK, nobody that’s more disappointed in the team – not just in the wins and losses – there’s nobody that’s more disappointed when we don’t live up to the Gator Standard and expectations than me.”
With that being said, the Gators are going to celebrate this win even though their fans won’t.
“I know we’re enjoying the win because it’s hard to win,” Mullen said. “It is hard to win in the game of football. We’ve faced plenty of adversity and not come out on the right end of it. So, I don’t want to say that [this win was disappointing]. It’s kind of disrespectful to our guys, their guys and the game of football.”