The Gators have an off week and then a huge game against Georgia. The Bulldogs look vulnerable between falling at home to a South Carolina team Florida just handled on the road and then not scoring in the first half against Kentucky. It’s going to be tempting to spend the next fortnight focused on the Cocktail Party.
If I can be so bold as to offer a suggestion: don’t. Before you spend all your time on the red and black, take a little time to savor the win over the garnet and black.
In ten years’ time, you won’t remember Florida’s win over South Carolina. Some things will stick with you. The Gamecock fans throwing towels onto the field to protest the officiating was memorable. Kyle Trask sushing the crowd in tribute to Feleipe Franks might be more so.
But time will go by, and you’ll start to get foggy on whether this win was 37-28 or 38-27. You’ll forget this was the game where Trask set a new career high with four touchdown passes. You’ll forget the name of the Gamecock running back who ripped through the defense for 175 yards.
That’s okay. The big ones stick with you, and the workmanlike wins leave you. When the Gators face three top-ten teams in four games, you’re not supposed to remember the fourth.
Ten years ago in 2009, the Gators went on the road in October and beat Mississippi State. You’ll definitely come up with the name of the Bulldogs’ head coach. Can you come up with any of the rest, such as:
- The final score? (29-19)
- The leading passer? (Tyson Lee, 145 yards)
- The leading rusher? (Chris Rainey, 90 yards)
- The leading receiver? (Riley Cooper, 63 yards)
- The number of turnovers? (Five, two picks for Tebow and three for Lee)
If you’re sharp, you may remember that both of Tim Tebow’s interceptions were pick-sixes by Johnthan Banks. It was one of the worst games Tebow played as a starter — 12/22 for 127 yards (5.8 per pass), 0 TDs, and 2 INTs — so wiping the game from your mind on those grounds alone is defensible.
Maybe you do remember that one well because of the Dan Mullen factor. Do you remember the preceding game? It wasn’t LSU.
I can’t stress enough how fine this all is. At noon, on the road, in the rain, Florida played an iffy first half and then turned on the jets and built an insurmountable lead in the second half. Good teams do this all the time. Maybe not the rain part, but the playing around with a lesser opponent before putting the game out of reach. They do it so frequently that none of the instances of it stand out, like so many Ohio State wins over Minnesota or Oklahoma wins over Texas Tech. Or, for that matter, Florida wins over South Carolina.
Steve Spurrier ruined the curve, but setting aside his years in Columbia, Florida should not have to remember much about games against the Gamecocks unless Jarvis Moss is involved. From Carolina’s ascent to SEC member status in 1992 through 2009, well into Spurrier’s tenure there, UF won every game except one. Only three of Florida’s wins were by one score.
No one could or did take a Gator win for granted last weekend, but for my part at least I allowed myself to expect a win. Florida was and is the better team, and beating two top ten teams in a row is antithetical to the entire history of South Carolina football. The idea of Will Muschamp being the one to pull it off was too much to take.
Besides the towel throwing and Trask shushing, the thing I’ll take from this game was Mullen preserving the win by stepping on the gas late. A lot of people still haven’t internalized this, but he is a fairly conservative head coach. He plays field position to protect his defense quite a lot, more than most people regarded as offensive innovators do. It’s why he’s been able to hire so many good defensive coordinators over the years.
When the Gators took over in Gamecock territory midway through the fourth quarter up 11, I was expecting to see him go run heavy to milk the clock before a field goal attempt to put his team up an even 14. Indeed, he went with a pair of Lamical Perine runs to begin the series. But then Trask started throwing, South Carolina helped with a pass interference flag, and Mullen went pass on 3rd & goal from the five for the removes-all-doubt score.
Mullen wasn’t trying to run out the clock. He was trying to run up the score. And he did, as that touchdown preserved the double-digit lead when Carolina got another score of its own afterwards. It stands in sharp contrast to a month ago when Kentucky was up 11 in the fourth quarter. The Wildcats did go run-heavy despite the pass being more effective and lost themselves a game. That’s what I’ll remember of this one, at least until bigger games crowd it out in the future.
The point is this: the Gators are at the point where they can beat a team good enough to beat them in adverse conditions without it being a huge deal. When a team wins ten or 11 games, not every win can be one you’ll talk about for years. They shouldn’t all be, anyway.
So marinate in this win just a little longer before licking your chops at the suddenly horrid Georgia passing game. Not so much for what it means to beat a Muschamp team that at best will spend the holidays in Shreveport, but because Florida is good enough to have non-notable wins again. That’s a good place to be.