Don’t go pointing a finger and saying if only this had happened or if only that had happened the Florida Gators would have beaten Ole Miss Saturday. There is too much blame to be shared by too many folks and quite frankly you neither have enough fingers or time to get around to everyone at fault. Just call it a total team loss.
This was an Ole Miss team that no matter how inspired it played, shouldn’t have beaten the Gators but the Rebels had a whole lot of help and much of it came from unexpected sources. This was death by a thousand self-inflicted cuts and it was excruciatingly painful to watch.
“It’s awful,” said Florida coach Urban Meyer, whose face and body language did screamed pain after the fourth-ranked Gators (3-1, 1-1 SEC East) gave unranked Ole Miss (3-2, 1-1 SEC West), a gift-wrapped 31-30 victory. “It’s bad stuff.”
The bad stuff was the almost unending sequence of mistakes by a Florida team that had breezed through three wins in almost mistake-free fashion. Where was that opportunistic team that did all the right things and completed nearly every assignment a week ago in Knoxville? Where was that focused team that executed Meyer’s plan to win with almost stone-cold precision?
Somewhere other than The Swamp, that’s for sure.
Name the mistake and the Gators probably made it. Give credit to Ole Miss for playing hard, playing with emotion and taking advantage of the Florida mistakes but without the mistakes, this would have been a Florida blowout. Instead, Ole Miss fed off the mistakes, gaining energy and confidence every time the Gators blew an assignment.
And there were plenty of blown assignments but none more glaring than the one on fourth and one at the Ole Miss 32 with 41 seconds left in the game. It was supposed to be Tim Tebow on a quarterback blast off the right side and over the past two years, that’s been money for the Gators.
It could have been money on Saturday if someone had put a hat on Ole Miss defensive tackle Peria Jerry and someone had remembered to seal off the defensive end. Instead of a first down and a chance to move in close enough for Jonathan Phillips to try a game-winning field goal, Tebow came up short.
“That’s something we very, very rarely happens,” said Tebow, who was moved to tears by the tough loss. “That’s part of our swagger that we can convert on fourth and one. We’ve done it for the last two years and they beat us to it.”
That one play didn’t beat the Gators but it certainly emphasized what went on at The Swamp. Ole Miss was motivated and opportunistic.
The Gators, on the other hand, seemed hell bent on self-destruction.
Florida, the last team in Division I without a turnover, fumbled the ball three times. The first one cost the Gators a shot at a field goal or a touchdown in the first half. Numbers two and three cost the Gators 10 points and catapulted Ole Miss right back into a game that Florida had controlled since the second quarter.
The first fumble came at the end of a 29-yard pass play from Tebow to Aaron Hernandez, who had the ball punched out of his grasp from behind at the Ole Miss 30, killing a drive that had score written all over it.
The second fumble was more critical. Florida led 17-7 at the half and the Gators got the ball first but a fumble on the second play from scrimmage by Percy Harvin turned the ball over to Ole Miss at the Florida 34. Ole Miss turned that one into a 33-yard Joshua Shene field goal.
Fumble number three was a stiletto to the heart. On Florida’s next play from scrimmage, Tebow fumbled the snap and Ole Miss recovered at the UF 18. The Florida defense played great coverage, forcing two straight incompletions, but on third down Ole Miss fooled the Gators with a shift before the snap. The Gators rotated too many people, leaving an entire side of the field wide open. Jevan Snead flipped a little pass over the head of Carlos Dunlap to Cordera Eason, who ran through three tackles on his way to a touchdown with 11:00 left in the third quarter.
The Gators had given up only 19 total points and 213 yards per game on the strength of playing assignment football. When you carry out your assignment and you don’t miss tackles, you dominate.
Florida blew assignments and missed far too many tackles in the second half but two plays, in particular, were costly. The Rebels took a 24-17 lead on a 40-yard touchdown run out of the “Wild Rebel” formation with 52 seconds left in the third quarter. McCluster took a direct snap and headed up the middle, but two Gators collided instead of filling the hole and Brandon Spikes whiffed on the tackle five yards upfield. From there it was a Red Sea parting experience as McCluster ran untouched to the end zone for the go-ahead score.
The second costly mistake by the defense came after the Gators had tied the game at 24-24 in the fourth quarter. A couple of series after Tebow powered in from a yard out with 11:26 left in the game, Florida elected to punt on fourth down at the Ole Miss 37. Punter Chas Henry came on to pin the Rebels back on the 11.
On second and six at the 15, the Gators went to a cover two scheme which meant cornerback Joe Haden let Shay Hodge go when he ran a fly pattern down the east sideline. Hodge was free safety Major Wright’s responsibility but Wright took a bad angle and never had a chance. Hodge gathered the ball in and ran untouched to the end zone, an 85-yard scoring play with 5:26 that stunned the crowd of 90,106 and gave Ole Miss a 31-24 lead.
The Gators answered that touchdown with a six-play 68-yard scoring drive. Tebow completed four straight passes to move the ball to the Ole Miss 15. Percy Harvin, who caught 13 passes for 186 yards and a touchdown and ran for another 82, took an option pitch and blew through a seam in the Ole Miss defense for a 15-yard touchdown with 3:28 remaining in the game.
All the Gators needed was an extra point to tie it up and on any other day it would have been automatic. On this day, however, Kentrell Lockett hurdled a Florida player at the line of scrimmage to block the kick and that provided the margin of victory.
That wasn’t the only special teams mistake, either. In the first quarter, Florida’s punt block team got caught by surprise when Ole Miss ran a reverse on fourth and one at the Ole Miss 39. Lionel Breaux found daylight around the left side and rambled 15 yards before Haden shoved him out of bounds. Two plays later, Snead and Hodge hooked up on a 36-yard throw to the Florida one. Snead got the touchdown on a one-yard bootleg.
All those mistakes in every phase of the game offset a brilliant performance by Harvin, whose 268 total yards and two touchdowns should have been more than enough to help the Gators win. Harvin had 114 receiving yards in the first half including a 43-yard touchdown pass from Tebow.
“Stupid mistakes,” said Tebow. “We talked after the Tennessee game about how well we did, not putting our defense in bad positions and turning the ball over and we did that this game at critical parts in the game.”
And that leads to the inevitable question: Was this a fluke win by an inferior team on a day when nothing went right for the Gators or has this Florida team been exposed?
If it’s a fluke, then the Gators will rebound starting next Saturday at Arkansas, which took a pounding at the hands of Texas. If it’s a fluke, the Gators will come out breathing fire and playing with purpose against the Razorbacks. Saturday they lacked emotion and focus and it showed in the number of mistakes they made. A focused, motivated team will turn in a brilliant week of practice and take it out on Arkansas next week with an all-around performance.
An exposed team will keep on making the misakes.
So which Florida team will show up?
If Tebow has any say in the matter, it will be the focused, fire-breathing Gators who play with a purpose. When he spoke to the media after the game, Tebow had to fight back the tears.
Asked how long it will take him to get over the hurt of defeat, Tebow responded, “I want this to stay in our hearts and keep hurting because This will motivate me personally and I think that includes everybody else and the coaches to never let this happen again especially when we feel we’re better than a team and don’t play up to our ability.”
They say a wounded animal is a dangerous animal. Most animals don’t shoot themselves in the feet, however, and that’s what Florida did early and often Saturday. We’ll have to wait a week to find out if they respond by turning dangerous. If they do, there is plenty still to be accomplished. If they can’t turn dangerous, this could be a good season that goes bad.