LEXINGTON, Ky. — The Florida Gators fumbled, were intercepted, had a player ejected for targeting collected seven penalties and watched their starting quarterback and leader, Feleipe Franks, leave the game with a gruesome leg injury. Still, as they have the previous seven times they’ve taken a football field they found a way to win.
Florida has nine games left on the schedule and it’s unlikely that any of them will feature Feleipe Franks.
With the Gators trailing 21-10 in the third quarter Dan Mullen dialed up a play to go for it on fourth down. Franks ran play-action but Stone Forsythe was beaten off the edge by Calvin Taylor, which forced Franks to step up into the pocket. Franks tried to get to the first down marker with his legs but Taylor caught him, tackling him from behind and in the process of dragging Franks down unintentionally rolled onto his ankle. At the same time, two Kentucky Wildcats hit him from the front and Franks screamed in pain. The entire team knelt around him in prayer as trainers affixed an air cast on the quarterback’s right ankle.
“I mean how he went out, him trying to get that first down and I respected that so much more. I respected him so much more because he’s laying it all out there on the line for us,” Jon Greenard said after the game. “Just to see him go down like that, in that fashion, we had to go out and put everything we had into that game to come out victorious and make him happy.”
Franks was devastated. He wept into a towel as he left the field knowing his season was over. He watched the rest of the game in the locker room with Megan Mullen and addressed the team after the game. Franks wasn’t having a particularly good game before the injury but the outpouring of love and respect on display when he went down with an injury shows how far he has come as a person, a teammate and a leader. He spoke to the team in the visiting locker room at Kroger Field after the game.
“Obviously he’s down from being hurt but he’s all about the team. He just told us, ‘make sure you stay together, don’t take anything for granted. Be ready to play your plays like it’s your last play because you never know when it could happen. He’s definitely devastated but he’s with us 100-percent,” Josh Hammond said. “He’s still that leader. He’s going to try to do whatever he can to help us.”
While Franks was being tended to Kyle Trask had to get loose. The redshirt junior from Manvel, Texas has been a backup for eight seasons. Trask was a backup in high school to D’Eriq King and has been a backup all four years he’s been in Gainesville. In the day and age of the transfer portal, he’s shown true loyalty to a University more than 850 miles away from his home.
Mullen sat down with Trask before the season and had that difficult conversation with the quarterback.
“I said, ‘Kyle, hey if you’re not the guy what’s your situation?’ And he said ‘I’m here.’ And I said, ‘okay you’re graduating what’s the situation?’ ‘I’m here. I’m ready to learn and I’m ready to go to grad school. I love being a Gator,” Mullen said of his conversation with Trask. “You know I’m going to work my tail off and compete.’ I haven’t heard a peep from any of our quarterbacks. All I hear from him is get ready for when my number is called.”
To come into a game is difficult. Add in that Trask’s team was on the road and losing at the time and the picture of how challenging the situation was begins to show. He completed his first five passed for 54 yards. Then on an option play Trask, while being tackled, was somehow able to flip the ball to Lamical Perine, who scored a touchdown to cut into the Kentucky lead.
“That was definitely improvisation,” Trask said with a chuckle. “Yeah, it was just an option to the left and he was playing between us and I tried to cut it up in between, but he crashed down on it and I managed to get it out to Perine.”
Trask finished the game 9-of-13 (69%) passing for 126 yards and 2 touchdowns (1 rushing). Dan Mullen had confidence in Trask because of the way the quarterback has prepared himself to be the starter despite, well, not ever being the starter.
The team was able to rally around their fallen leader in Franks and play with a renewed energy for Trask but that adrenaline will wear off. This will be the first week that Kyle Trask goes into knowing he will start and he’ll get to face Tennessee at home. Trask says there is nothing that changes for him. He’s been preparing to be the starter since he’s been in Gainesville, so there’s nothing that needs to change with his new expanded role.
It’s been eight long years for Kyle Trask going all the way back to high school as a backup. His time is now.
“This is big-time college football,” he said. “I’m very excited, very excited.”