Head coach Jon Sumrall met with the media following Florida’s 38-19 loss to South Carolina in Week 6.
Here’s everything he had to say.
OPENING STATEMENT
JON SUMRALL: Disappointing football today by us. No excuse for it. Not many words that are going to make any of it right. We have to go back to work and improve. I’m frustrated with every part of what we did today. It starts with me. I’ve got to do a better job of getting this team ready to play to its best.
Today’s not anywhere near where we need to perform. So many things to clean up. Just not a good football performance by us. So I’ll open it up.
Q. Coach, last week, you were saying there are no easy fixes defensively. When you see that, where do you turn? How do you start kind of getting that kind of tied up?
JON SUMRALL: I felt like when the game was in balance, I thought we stopped the run at times decently. This is the seventh best rushing offense in college football. And you look at the final stats, 37 carries for 114. When the game was in balance, we were, on defense, fitting the run fairly well and limiting maybe leaky yardage in the run game.
We wore down a little bit really in all phases. But defensively, I think late in the game, you felt like they were finishing forward on more runs.
The disappointing part is when we have them maybe bottled buck in the backfield a couple times. They get out of it. You’re in position to make a play, and we just don’t get guys down. That’s really frustrating.
In the throw game, they hit some explosive pass plays today. It wasn’t on just one guy. It was certain guys in different situations, and we have got to win 50/50 balls down the field and be in competitive position to make plays on those balls.
But there’s no magic to fixing it. We have to go back to work. We have to play in, play out. I’ve told the team just now and I’ve told them really all year, on defense you have to assume you’re the challenged player every play. You have to assume that you’re the target every play. And we have a long way to go, clearly.
Q. And the run game, how would you assess it? Last week, it struggled from the start. Today, there still weren’t many, like, runs over maybe ten yards or whatever.
JON SUMRALL: Yeah, I felt like for the majority of the day, their defensive front won the battle at the line of scrimmage over us in the run and the pass game. Like when we wanted to get into obvious drop-back pass situations, it was bad too. And I think they’ve got good players, but we have to help our guys play better.
And then, too, we missed a couple things in the run game at times. Just maybe a certain read on a couple runs that could have been a little bit cleaner. But I think the physical component to the game, we didn’t win at the line of scrimmage.
In the SEC, you’re going to get challenged every week. It doesn’t change. It’s been the same every week we’ve played. There’s been a physical challenge on the other side. We have not answered the bell for that the last two weeks, and that’s disappointing.
Q. Jon, you said after you guys beat Ole Miss that there was still so much room to improve and if the guys didn’t, they weren’t going to like the results. Were you fearful of kind of this when you were kind of thinking about that at the time?
JON SUMRALL: Yeah. Like I said a week ago, I see us every day. We are very much a work in progress. Even after the Ole Miss game, I was uneasy. We have nowhere — I mean, two weeks ago today, we had nowhere near arrived.
Now we clearly haven’t arrived the last two weeks because we’ve been exposed in a pretty substantial way. And this conference will do it to you. But I think sometimes, and I said this last week as well, sometimes when you’re winning, it masks maybe the things that are not going right or that you’re not doing well.
When the outcome goes the other way, it heightens peoples’ awareness of it. And I don’t know that a whole lot has honestly changed. What has changed, like today we’re minus 3 in the turnover margin. It’s going to be hard to win in this league doing that.
We haven’t hit the explosive runs we were accustomed to hitting the last four games. That’s going to come and go some. I don’t know that we’re currently the type of team that’s just going to run right at people all day and run them over every play. We’re trying to do creative things at times to get the ball maybe on the perimeter in different guys’ hands.
But, yeah, we’re the same football team. We haven’t gotten better and improved in certain areas to maybe offset our weaknesses.
Q. And then as far as the defensive issues today, how problematic was the third down defense?
JON SUMRALL: Yeah, that was the tell of the story, I felt like was, you know, getting to third and 17, jump offsides, give them third and 12. What I think is a pretty good call for a screen, your man, if you just get attached to your man, you can get off the field. Didn’t get attached to the man. They convert.
There are certain ones that pop up in my mind. The third and longs are the troublesome ones. When you’re third and 1 or 2, the outcome for success is a lot lower. When the third and longs hit, when we try to come after them and maybe leave our guys out to dry in the secondary a little bit and isolate them, we didn’t get home a couple times, and they were able to convert.
And then when we said, okay, if we’re not going to be able to get home with pressure, let’s four-man rush, drop seven, maybe play vision coverage. And then something would happen where we wouldn’t plaster in coverage or a guy one time I think, slipped and kind of fell.
It’s executing and sometimes having a better call in, but we just have to find ways to get off the field in those situations. We get to third down, especially the third and longs, we have to perform a lot better. That’s coaches and that’s players. It’s all of us.
Q. Just curious, I guess when you’re at this point in the season and the coverage issues have been a bit persistent, how could you approach it at this point when you’re entrenched? Can you go for something dramatic, or do you have to keep trusting that the guys you have can flip a switch?
JON SUMRALL: Yeah, so we’ve practiced everybody on our roster in competitive situations to see if there’s different guys that can elevate. Everybody that’s played has had some good moments but plenty of not-so-good moments.
We’ve played man, we’ve played zone. We’ve played man with pressure. We’ve played zone with pressure. We’ve played man and been in drop 8 and spy the quarterback. We’ve played zone and been in drop 8 and spy the quarterback.
We’re throwing a lot of different things at it to try to get it fixed. I think when it’s not going the way you want it to, you’re searching for answers, and there’s nothing you won’t look at. We’ve looked at different front groups. We’ve subbed some nickel fronts and some dime fronts and some penny fronts and some different personnel groupings to try to create some advantages for us maybe in the line of scrimmage.
And then the guys playing the back end are the guys that have practiced at the highest level on the back end. And, you know, all I know to do is go off of how guys practice. And then when they play, we evaluate it, and we always reassess who’s playing and trying to give guys more opportunities if they’re playing good. Right now, we do have to continue to improve.
Q. Then on the injury front, where was VB coming into the game, as well as do you have any updates on Duke Clark and then it looked like Myles Graham went back to the locker room around halftime?
JON SUMRALL: Yeah, so VB was game time decision-ish. Probably I thought, after yesterday’s practice, he participated to some extent. Wasn’t fully 100 percent but moved around and did run and took some team reps yesterday. And then just didn’t feel like he was capable of doing with confidence as we entered today, this morning. Just wasn’t quite confident in cutting it loose. I think he’s closer, hopefully. He’s cleared to do as much as he can and feels confident in right now.
But when you’re a speed player, you have to have confidence in your ability to cut and change direction because those are obviously strengths of his. And so just didn’t quite feel like he could really be himself. And so we said, all right, we’re not going to put you out there and put you in harm’s way if you’re not prepared to play the game the right way. That was that one.
Duke, looks like he’s got an ankle. We’ll know more early in the week. Not sure how severe yet, but it was substantial enough that he couldn’t return today.
And then Myles was just like a little bit of a cramping type issue out of the locker room. We had an extended — sometimes weird, but when you have those extended layoffs because it was in the lightning delay, he came back out, and we started the warmup.
We came out earlier than normal out of halftime to do our warmup. We usually come out at about six minutes. We came out closer to ten minutes, about nine minutes before we were going to kick to move him just a little bit more with the long layoff.
And just felt a little bit of a cramp. It wasn’t substantial. Got a little fluid in him. Came back out and was available. He didn’t start the first drive. 8 and 29 started inside linebacker on the first drive, but he was available to go back in pretty quickly. He was back out there before the defense took the field.
Q. Coach, with the recent struggles on offense, how important is it to teach or to preach with the unit patience, not pressing. Jaden seems to be kind of pressing on some runs, maybe not taking what the defense is giving him, trying to look for that home run. And then Aaron, on some of the pass plays, maybe not just taking what the defense is giving him. With those struggles, how important is it to preach that patience and let the offense basically work for them?
JON SUMRALL: You have to execute within the play that’s called, and then sometimes the other side presents something that you may have to adjust for.
When we play well up front, it makes everybody’s job easier. The hardest position to play in sports is quarterback. Quarterback, running back, both the guys in the backfield. A lot of what they’re able to get done is predicated by what’s going on in front of them.
But, yeah, we want those guys to feel like they don’t have to hit the home run or the big play down in and down out. It’s about staying on schedule, it’s about being efficient, it’s about executing.
Sometimes, you know, on one of the plays early in the game, we had a naked and Philo tried to make a throw across the middle. It was somewhat of a jeopardy throw, and I just said hey — after he came off, said hey, I’m okay with you tucking it and getting five yards there. I think a five-yard gain keeps us on schedule.
And so sometimes you have to understand, you know, hey, is it not there? Take what’s there. And that could be the throw game or the run game, but we do have to find ways to stay on schedule right now offensively and get positive yards down in, down out.
Q. Red zone, they kind of finished in there. You guys didn’t.
JON SUMRALL: Yeah.
Q. And how much did the deluge play to the factor to go for the field goal on fourth and goal kind of short there?
JON SUMRALL: Just wanted to get points. We had two plays inside the 5 and felt like we ran into a wall a little bit on both of them. And on the analytics book, we ended up — I make the decision. I don’t go with just what the book tells me. We were right on that fringe of does it tell you to go or kick. Basically, it says almost like 50/50-ish there. Doesn’t tell you strong go. Says kind of make the call.
A lot of times, when it could be a rain game, I feel like take the points. At that time, it was a lower scoring game too so it wasn’t a high-scoring affair at that point.
And so wanted to get the points after the drive. And then, really, after the way the second down play and the third down play went, didn’t give me a whole lot of confidence that we were going to execute on the fourth down off the way we had performed.
Q. And you alluded to it a little bit. There was a little bit of a longer delay with the lightning and stuff. As far as wearing down in the second half, this is the second straight game where it’s kind of lopsided in the second half. Anything you attribute that to?
JON SUMRALL: That’s a good question. I thought about it last week quite a bit and already, even before I came in here, am racking my brain for we’ve cut practice a little this week length-wise. Not a lot, but a little because I’ve been worried about are we hitting that stretch of playing five, six, next week going on seven games. Are you maybe a little fatigued, worn down.
How do we get our guys to be as fast and fresh on game day. Then also have the endurance it takes to play on Saturday, because I do think we’ve looked a little bit worn down in the second half. I would completely agree. I think we’ve looked maybe a little sluggish, a little slow, and not maybe as strong as we need to be to finish the right way.
Q. At the end of the first half, you guys seemed to decide later that maybe you wanted to — just what the thinking there? You didn’t use the time-outs and a lot of clock ran off.
JON SUMRALL: Yeah, that’s a good question. So we’re getting the ball out of the half first so that was one component. We had just thrown a pick that gave them points. And so we’re like, all right, let’s regroup, recalibrate. Let’s also see on the first down can we get positive yards and then kind of make a decision, okay, off the first down play, do we get some momentum started?
They had time-outs in the pocket. So did we. And what we didn’t want to do is incomplete pass, incomplete pass. They have all their time-outs in the pocket and we give them a chance to score like happened last week in Missouri, and Missouri got up 17-10, and then you flinch and it was 20-10 at halftime. Then it was 27-10 after the first round of the third quarter. So we’re trying to avoid that, honestly.
I’m not calling the offense, but I’m telling Buster, hey, let’s get this thing started. Let’s get a first down. When we get the first down, then let’s roll. Especially when you’re getting the ball out of the half.
The other component to it as well is right before the interception, I mean, when we were dropping back to pass, the quarterback was not real comfortable because the rush, 6 and 40, and those guys were living in our backfield in obvious pass situations.
So calling a drop-back pass sounds great until you realize, hey, we haven’t blocked those guys very well all day. And really, their interior guys had gotten after us pretty good too.
So when they knew it was throwing downs, we weren’t holding up from protection very good. So we were trying to get something started in the drive and did not. Then once we did get the first, then we decided to go. That’s when we decided to move.
To be in those situations, especially when you’re getting the ball in the second half, let’s see if we can get a first. Let’s start with a first down. All right, we get the first down. Now let’s go.
If we don’t get moving forward, then you’re getting the ball in the second half, I think then you have to make a different decision. But did not want to give them an opportunity, with us backed up, to possess the football on a shorter field and have an opportunity at a field goal when we were getting it out of the half.