For the second week in a row, the No. 11 Gators made things difficult on themselves by coming out of the gates slow, this time against Tennessee.
A missed tackle on a screen pass and a communication breakdown in the secondary led to two long touchdown passes for the Volunteers in the first half.
Offensively, back-to-back penalties on third down killed a drive and forced them to settle for a long field goal. Receiver Jacob Copeland lost a fumble inside the red zone. They didn’t run the ball quite as efficiently in the first half as they had in their first three games.
It all added up to a 14-10 Tennessee lead early in the second quarter and a feeling of nervousness among the boisterous crowd inside of the Swamp.
This time, however, the Gators’ surge from the midway point of the second quarter on was more than enough to win the game. Florida outscored Tennessee 21-0 the rest of the way and defeated the Volunteers 38-14. It was Florida’s 16th win in the last 17 meetings in the rivalry.
“If we want to be a great team, we’ve got to play great every snap,” UF coach Dan Mullen said. “We’ve got to execute, have attention to detail, do every small thing the right way. I thought the second half, for the most part, we really did that. We came out and played really well in the second half.”
The Gators (3-1, 1-1 SEC) did get off to a quick start in the first half, though it was short-lived. After the defense forced a three-and-out, quarterback Emory Jones rushed for 24 yards on the opening drive, and he also completed a 16-yard pass to Justin Shorter. Jones finished the drive by lofting a 4-yard touchdown pass to a wide-open Malik Davis on a wheel route.
UF forced Tennessee into a third-and-8 on their second drive of the game. Quarterback Hendon Hooker completed a screen pass to running back Tiyon Evans. Linebacker Amari Burney missed a tackle attempt near the line of scrimmage. Several more UF defenders missed, and Evans sprinted for a 47-yard touchdown to tie the game.
Rushes of 14 yards by Dameon Pierce and 13 yards by Jones, along with completions of 10 yards to Xzavier Henderson and 13 yards to Nay’Quan Wright, helped advance the Gators to the Tennessee 18-yard line. However, a 2-yard loss by Wright, a false start penalty and a delay-of-game penalty caused UF to settle for a 47-yard field goal by Jace Christmann.
Two Volunteers’ possessions later, JaVonta Payton ran wide open down the UF sideline for a 75-yard touchdown reception. Mordecai McDaniel was the closest defender at about 15 yards behind Payton, though it appeared that a miscommunication led to the coverage breakdown. Regardless, the Volunteers took their first – and, as it turned out, only – lead of the game.
Two Florida drives later, Wright sprinted through a hole up the middle of the Volunteers’ defense, maintained his balance after being hit and raced into the end zone for a 23-yard score, his first of the year.
Tennessee punted on the ensuing possession, and Jimmy Holiday blasted Henderson early and high for a kick-catch interference with targeting penalty, while William Mohan was penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct. The result was a free 30 yards in field position for the Gators.
But they didn’t take advantage of that opportunity to blow the game open late in the first half. After catching a 17-yard pass from Jones on fourth-and-2, Copeland fumbled while fighting multiple defenders for extra yards. Tennessee recovered to keep it a three-point game at the half.
“He’s physical, he’s tough, he’s strong,” Mullen said of Copeland. “I don’t mind him doing that. He’s trying to go play and make plays after the catch. Though you’re in a two-minute situation, so you can get out of bounds. It’d be one thing to kind of look at for him right there, but he’s just got to understand, you’ve always got to understand, if you’re going to be a tough guy, a physical guy that’s tough and battling for yardage, it’s not usually the first guy, it’s the next couple guys that make it. So, you’ve got to make sure you’re really strong with the football.”
At halftime, Mullen challenged his guys to play more consistently, especially on the defensive side of the ball. They played well on all but a handful of plays in the first half, but those handful of bad plays were keeping the game close.
“I challenged the defense at halftime that … you see we can play great and then miss a tackle and then have a blown coverage, and, all of a sudden, it’s a tight game. And I challenged them guys about doing it every play, every single play, playing at a high, high level, and we did that all the way to the final play of the game.”
Indeed they did, on both sides of the ball.
On the opening drive of the second half, Davis rushed for 10 yards before Jones completed a 33-yard deep ball to Shorter and a 13-yard pass to tight end Kemore Gamble. On second-and-6 from the Tennessee 13, Jones threw a backward pass to Trent Whittemore, who played quarterback some at Buchholz High School in Gainesville.
As soon as Whittemore caught the ball, the defenders thought it was a screen pass and started rushing toward him. Instead, Whittemore floated a pass over their heads and into Gamble’s waiting arms for a score.
“You call trick plays, a lot of them [are] about timing and execution,” Mullen said. “I thought it was good timing. We were driving, and they were kind of into, like, ‘We’re in the red zone. I’m in attack mode.’ We then executed it very well.”
It was the Gators’ first touchdown pass by a non-quarterback since Kadarius Toney threw one against Mississippi State in 2018. It was also the exact same play call that Toney threw his touchdown pass on. It’s called “Kodak,” a reference to Florida-based rapper Kodak Black.
Jones said that “Kodak” wasn’t the play that was initially called, but Mullen got his attention and made the switch once he saw how the defense was lined up.
“He always has this little whistle thing he does on the sideline,” Jones said. “He whistled, and I heard him, and he checked to that play. Honestly, I told him after we scored, I said, ‘That was a hell of a play.’ He said, ‘I know.’”
The Volunteers drove 56 yards on 14 plays and bled more than six minutes off of the clock on their first possession of the second half, but they came away empty-handed after Jimmy Calloway dropped Hooker’s pass on fourth-and-5 inside UF territory.
On the next drive, Jones tossed a 9-yard touchdown to a wide-open Rick Wells on a play-action rollout.
Davis added a 9-yard touchdown run in the final moments for good measure.
Pierce said the key to the offense’s strong second half was just letting their natural abilities take over instead of worrying about what Tennessee’s defense was doing.
“They came out and did a lot of things defensively we didn’t really expect them to do tonight,” he said. “It caused us to think a lot. Coach Mullen, he kind of just shrunk down the play calling and wanted us to go. I think that was our challenge, and that’s what we did in the second half.”
While the Gators aren’t pleased with the mistakes that they made in the first half, there are some positives to take away. First, the running game continued to produce at an elite level. Tennessee entered the day as the nation’s No. 5 rushing defense, and Florida pounded them for 283 yards and 7.1 yards per rush despite missing starting right guard Stewart Reese.
Only four players recorded a rushing attempt, but they all logged at least 30 yards. Jones turned in his first career 100-yard rushing game with 144 yards on 15 carries, including a 49-yard run in the fourth quarter.
The Gators’ 1,290 rushing yards through four games are their most since at least 1965.
“We just try to come out and do what always do week to week – run the ball,” Pierce said. “Running the ball’s a significant part of our offense. We like to get things going early in the run game. Tonight, it was obviously a good showing of that. But we still have things to fix on the offensive end – little reads here and there, a couple missed blocks, things that we want to fix Monday.”
The Gators also dominated third downs, converting nine of 14 on offense and giving up just five of 13 on defense.
“When you get in those situations right there, I think they’re big momentum swings, and they also let you control the tempo of the game,” Mullen said. “Even that final possession of ours, you’re sitting there and you have a pretty solid lead, but you’re in the SEC, and Saturday nights in the SEC, anything can happen. You’re sitting there, and our ability to convert some third downs and stay on the field and kind of finish off the game was big.”
The defense held Tennessee to just the two long touchdowns despite giving up 423 yards.
“I feel like we were playing real good in the first half; we just gave up a couple of big plays,” linebacker Mohamoud Diabate said. “That first touchdown we had a missed tackle. That second touchdown, we had a missed assignment. But, we felt like in between those plays, we were playing really good defense. The message was [to] just eliminate those big plays and play every single play with attention to details and just to execute.
“We stopped the big plays. We felt that they didn’t have the ability to drive the ball on us play for play for play. We didn’t think they could do that. So, we just had to eliminate the big plays and make sure everybody was on their assignment.”
While the Gators’ ability to shake off tough starts and make in-game adjustments is impressive, it’s a dangerous way to live. A slow start cost them the game against Alabama and may cost them a couple of more games if they don’t figure out a way to start quicker.
“The sky’s the limit, not only as an offense but the team in general,” Pierce said. “We have a lot of great guys. Coach said we just have to play together as a team. Once we find our little thing – we’re just missing one thing. We’ve just got to find it. We’re trying to find it week to week. As soon as we mesh together, we’re going to be a great team.”