The Florida Gators defense continued playing like kids with behavioral problems, bullying opposing offenses and carrying the offense on its back.
The Gators held Georgia to 164 yards of total offense. The fourth time the Gators have held its opponent to under 200 yards this season, a stat only Michigan and Alabama can claim as well.
In 2014 a freshman Nick Chubb rushed 21 times for 156 yards and a touchdown against Florida. Florida held Chubb to 20 yards on 9 carries Saturday, completely taking Georgia’s running game out of the equation.
“We definitely wanted to try to make them as one-dimensional as possible,” head coach Jim McElwain said. “And the dimension that we wanted them to get into was to have to throw it. Our gap-control in the run game was pretty spot-on.”
In a game where Florida’s offense had to scrape together 231 yards on 73 plays the defense stymied Georgia. The Bulldogs’ first points came after a bad interception by Luke Del Rio, giving the ball to Georgia on Florida’s 25. The defense surrendered 18 yards but kept the Dawgs out of the end zone. Rodrigo Blankenship connected on a 25-yard field goal, the first points that Florida had allowed in the first quarter this entire season.
The defense responded with a three-and-out on Georgia’s next drive.
Senior linebacker Jarrad Davis provided an emotional lift for the unit. Davis badly sprained his left ankle in a homecoming win over Missouri two weeks ago. Davis spent the week leading up to the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party in the training room, getting his ankle worked on.
“He’s probably the main leader on this team,” defensive tackle Khairi Clark said. “And, you know, we always feed off him because he’s always the vocal guy, and we feed off his energy. So everything that he says, we listen to as a team.”
Florida’s defense pitched a near perfect game. Georgia has a six-play, 75-yard touchdown drive in the second quarter that the defense would like to have back. Freshman quarterback Macon Eason was able to get out of the pocket and direct traffic on broken plays, finding receivers in space.
After that lone drive, where Georgia gained more than half of the yards it would accumulate all afternoon the Gators closed up shop. Georgia didn’t score in the second half and never really threatened to score either. The Dawgs rushed for two yards six attempts and gained 32 yards in the final half.
With the rushing game completely shut down the freshman Eason was asked to pass on Florida’s secondary, ranked second in the nation.
“There’s not a lot of holes in our defense, from our DBs to our linebackers to the d-line, there’s not a lot of places you can pick at,” linebacker Alex Anzalone said. “I think one guy that definitely stepped up today was Duke Dawson, you saw two or three big huge plays. I know he wanted to step up doing that. He showed that he can cover very well.”
The Gators’ defense continues to lead the SEC in scoring (11.7 points per game), total (239.4 yards per game) and passing defense (134.3 yards-per-game). They face an Arkansas team that is third in the SEC is passing with a very balanced offensive attack. The Gators know what’s at stake and they know they the defense will likely have to carry the load.
“We need to just go out there and play our game and execute/ No matter what the offense does, we can get a turnover, we can spark them,” Davis said. “We’ve just got to keep doing us, we can’t focus on them. The moment we focus on them, that’s when we’re going to slip and that’s when this thing gets out of hand.”