LEXINGTON, KY — For an entire week, the Kentucky Wildcats must have felt all the forces in the universe were on their side for a change, conspiring and collaborating to put an end to 22 embarrassing years of domination at the hands of the Florida Gators. Florida’s All-American middle linebacker Brandon Spikes was hurting with Achilles tendinits. Field-stretching wide receiver Deonte Thompson wasn’t responding well enough to treatment for his hamstring injury. And, on top of that, the flu was threatening to do what Kentucky had failed to do for three consecutive years, which was to stop Tim Tebow.
Oh, the Wildcats had it all going for them all right, including a little help from a select group in the national media which kept boosting their confidence with a barrage of stories about how the Gators had only beaten Tennessee by 10 points last week and how maybe that brain-jammed-in-neutral, tongue-in-passing-gear Tennessee coach’s brilliant daddy of a defensive coordinator had come up with the blueprint for stopping the Florida offense cold in its tracks.
Throw in a standing room only crowd of 71,011 at 67,000-seat capacity Commonwealth Stadium and a much-improved Kentucky team and the recipe for an upset was in place. This crowd was ripe for an upset of monumental proportions, much like the last time an unbeaten, number one-ranked team came calling in Lexington. That was 2007 when eventual national champion LSU got whacked at the knees.
What the Wildcats couldn’t anticipate was the perfect storm, a night when for 15 minutes, Florida’s offense, defense and special teams merged into an unstoppable, devastating force that turned them into a collection of dead roaches, on their backs with their arms and legs pointed skyward. When the clock finally struck zero to mercifully end the first quarter humiliation, the Gators had a 31-0 lead and the game really couldn’t end fast enough for Kentucky.
As bad as the score was, the numbers behind the score were even worse. Florida’s offense ran off 21 plays for 223 yards. Kentucky had 12 plays for minus-one. The Gators had 13 first downs. Kentucky had zero. The Gators had 148 rushing yards. Kentucky had minus two. Florida had 105 passing yards. The Wildcats had one. Florida had 12 plays of 10 or more yards in the first quarter. Kentucky’s longest play was a four-yard gain.
Florida did all that offensive damage against a defense that stacked the box. Kentucky trusted its corners to shut down the Florida passing game. The Wildcats thought eight in the box could contain Florida’s running. Wrong. When Tim Tebow wasn’t breaking loose in the secondary, Jeff Demps and Emmanuel Moody were doing their best shot out of a gun imitations.
Then there were the special teams which added plenty of insult to injury. Chris Rainey blew straight up the middle to block a Ryan Tydlicka punt, which he recovered in the end zone for Florida’s second touchdown of the game to make it 17-0 with 6:04 remaining in the quarter. It’s not like Kentucky wasn’t aware the Gators like to block an occasional punt. The Gators got two in the first quarter against the Wildcats last year.
It was, Urban Meyer admitted, the best quarter of football the Florida Gators have played since he became the head coach back in 2005.
“When you talk about three phases … to take the opening kickoff and take it right down the field and score and then just boom, boom and the blocked punt,” Meyer said after top-ranked Florida’s 41-7 win over the previously unbeaten Wildcats. “That was really good and then once again it’s who you’re playing — SEC opponent on the road, full-house, noisy stadium, and to come out there and play like that … that’s really good.”
The good had Meyer sitting on top of the mountain, quite a contrast to the way he felt at 3:57 remaining in the third quarter when Tebow went down with a neck injury when Kentucky’s Taylor Wyndham and the Gators’ own Marcus Gilbert caught him in a sandwich. Wyndam came in free from the left side and sacked Tebow, knocking him into right tackle Gilbert, whose knee hit Tebow in the back of the head. Tebow went down in a heap and was motionless on the grass at the Kentucky 12.
For the first time in Tim Tebow’s college football career, he was the one that didn’t get up from a violent collision.
“I’m used to Tim being the first one up,” said tight end Aaron Hernandez, who caught three passes for 54 yards and a touchdown. “It was so strange. He was just laying there and I’m thinking, ‘Come on, Tim … get up. You always get up. Get up!’”
Only this time Tebow didn’t get up, leaving a sour taste to an otherwise brilliant performance by the Gators (4-0, 2-0 SEC East). When Meyer saw Tebow go down he felt his heart lodged in his throat and his stomach churning. Everybody on the Florida sideline and even the Kentucky fans were silent as Tebow lay motionless for two to three minutes.
“It was like my son,” Meyer said. “Imagine your son laying on the ground. My knees were shaking and I thought my goodness.”
Tebow was taken to the University of Kentucky Medical Center where he was to be held overnight, but the loss of the marquee player in all of college football took away the giddiness of a brilliant performance. The Gators ran up 495 yards of total offense including 362 on the ground while holding Kentucky to 86 rushing yards and only 93 yards passing.
The only blemish for the Gators was the touchdown drive they gave up in the second quarter but they held fast the rest of the way. Janoris Jenkins and Major Wright snuffed off Kentucky drives with interceptions, extending Florida’s streak of games with an interception to 16, best in the nation.
Before he was injured, Tebow ran for 123 yards and two touchdowns to move past LSU’s Kevin Faulk for second place on the all-time Southeastern Conference record list for rushing touchdowns. Tebow needs only one more touchdown to tie Georgia’s Herschel Walker for the all-time record.
Tebow also threw for 105 yards and a touchdown, a 44-yard strike to Hernandez on the final play of the first quarter to bring his career touchdowns responsible total to 121 (73 passing, 48 rushing), one behind Danny Wuerffel.
It was 31-0 after a quarter and 31-7 when Tebow went down in the third quarter. The Gators added a second Caleb Sturgis field goal and got an eight-yard touchdown pass from John Brantley to Riley Cooper in the fourth quarter to close out the scoring.
Meyer felt the Gators did exactly what they set out to do.
“Against a very good Kentucky team, a team that’s won three straight bowl games, a team we considered one of the upper-echelon SEC opponents and in a hostile environment, they came out and played hard, offense, defense and the kicking game,” Meyer said. “College football is all about playing great defense and the offensive line controlling the line of scrimmage and then we got hand on a punt and that just deflates a stadium. I thought our guys came out really charged up and they played hard.”
And that was surprising considering all that happened during the week when one Gator after another was in isolation with flu symptoms. Friday, when the team flew from Gainesville to Lexington, two university-owned jets carried another 12 players, including Tebow, Joe Haden, Major Wright and Riley Cooper. Florida’s medical and training staff worked yeoman hours and somehow got them all ready to play.
“I would like to take my hat off to them for what they did to get some of these players ready to play,” Meyer said. “On Thursday we were really alarmed. Our doctors did a phenomenal job getting this team ready to play.”
There were still concerns right up to the moment the game began that Tebow, Cooper, Wright and Haden might not be able to go.
“Riley Cooper took an IV, two bags right before the game,” Meyer said. “So did Tebow; so did Major; so did Joe Haden. We had 12 people on planes other than our plane.”
Tebow, of course, was the major concern. He’s never missed a game with illness or injury and Meyer knew something was up after Thursday’s practice.
“On Thursday after practice, right at the end of practice he came up to me and he had that look on his face and I know that look now,” Meyer said. “I don’t like that look.”
It should surprise no one that Tebow played Saturday but it was surprising that he went down considering he’s taken the best shots college football could offer for more than three years and always bounced back up. Meyer saw another look on Tebow’s face on the field after the injury. It was a place he’d never seen his quarterback before and one he never wants to see again. He also saw a look on the sideline that made him understand exactly why he’s in the coaching business. When Meyer came back to the sideline after Tebow was helped off the field, he saw a team that is totally together, united in their concern about a fallen teammate.
“I love this team,” Meyer said. “I love these guys. I love being around them. I love the fact they fight for each other and they pray for each other and care for each other. It’s really cool.”
Add those factors to a talented roster that plays with intensity and gets the job done, and you have moments like the one in the first quarter when the Gators created the perfect storm on the field. In creating that perfect storm, the Gators might have created their own monster. Given that he’s a perfectionist, you can know Urban Meyer will show that film over and over again to remind his team that they are capable of doing this for an entire game, not just one quarter.
On this night, one quarter was all it took to lay waste to Kentucky.
“I felt like I had never coached a down in my life the way we came out in that first 15 minutes at home,” said Kentucky coach Rich Brooks, who added, “They were playing at a totally different speed than we were.”
That’s what happens when the perfect storm comes together.