They were never going to win them all, but the loss to Missouri was a bitter pill to swallow. A lot of illusions were broken in this one.
Only 13 yards on 12 carries? Yeah, Jadan Baugh’s not going to win the Heisman.
Beat in the regular season by — going out on a limb here, I know — someone who’s not going to be the eventual national champion? Yeah, Jon Sumrall is not Curt Cignetti.
The thing about retaining most of a Billy Napier team under a new regime is that you’re liable to see a very Napier-esque performance at some point. And boy howdy, did we see that in Columbia.
Florida’s been great at blocking so far this year. Heck, Lacota Dippre had gotten about as much praise as any of the tight ends through four games, and he’d yet to even catch a pass (though he finally got one in this game). The Gators couldn’t block anything today, leaving Baugh with nowhere to run and Aaron Philo under constant pressure in the pocket.
UF also had been a good tackling team to date. The only reason going soft late worked against Auburn is that, while they were giving the Tigers plenty of open space underneath, they were tackling guys instantly after catching. They bent but never broke.
Instead against these Tigers from Missouri, they broke frequently: 47-yard touchdown pass, 31-yard touchdown pass, 77-yard rush nearly for a touchdown, 80-yard touchdown rush. Those four plays add up to 235 yards. Florida had all of 231 prior to the meaningless 94-yard touchdown drive that about closed out the game.
I would say something about penalties, but Sumrall’s squad has been racking up plenty of them so far this year. Regardless, this performance was the spitting image of some of the ones we saw the last four years. Every bad habit was on display whether the players were holdovers from the last regime or not. It takes more than a year to get all the Napier out of the walls, it seems.
Sumrall’s favorite quote this week was that every week you have to humble yourselves or someone else will humble you. Missouri did that with aplomb, bouncing back quickly from a rough loss to Mississippi State last week and looking like the better and more poised team.
That as much as anything was new here: the Gators had never looked rattled this year. Jumping out to early leads at Auburn and against Ole Miss certainly helped to that end. Their short lived 3-0 lead today didn’t count, and instead there was pressure throughout. Mizzou handled and applied pressure, while UF got steadily and increasingly compacted by it.
If it helps, you can pull out old chestnuts like Nick Saban losing to UL-Monroe at Alabama in 2007. That was even a home game. Or you can bring out program-specific ones like Steve Spurrier losing 45-3 at Tennessee in 1990 or Urban Meyer losing 31-3 at Alabama. Getting smoked on the road in the first year is not necessarily a portent of doom for a good UF head coach.
You can also bet that everyone will pull out all the standard “crossroads” talk, or about how the honeymoon is over, or that we’ll finally get to see how Sumrall responds to adversity. His initial response was in the postgame press conference, where he was having his own battle between saying the problem was on the coaches and trying to take responsibility, and then pointing out that the players just weren’t executing the game plan well. It’s both, and the buck stops with the coaches since it’s their job to get the players to execute well. He still walks that line successfully, I think.
Because I am a post-Spurrier Florida fan and therefore focused on how to get to a championship, I have actually been thinking all week about Philo. I made the comment weeks ago that Philo might be one of the best players on the offense and the coaches should think about putting more on his shoulders. I was a bit ahead of myself, it turns out. He’s not ready to carry a team when the rushing game isn’t working, if he ever will be. They were leaning on the run game the last two weeks in part because it worked and in part because they needed to.
The thought did cross my mind that it might actually be a bad thing if the team by fortunate happenstance wins too many games this year. Yes, leave it to a spoiled Gator fan to worry about winning too many games. The point is that I don’t think Philo is a championship level quarterback without an all-timer of a defense like Georgia’s 2021 unit that Stetson Bennett won his first title opposite. UF doesn’t have one of those this year and won’t next year either.
I don’t want Florida to hold back from recruiting over him in the portal this coming winter, because there are better guys than Philo is in the portal every year. I get maybe going with him and spending the savings elsewhere for a year, like for retaining Baugh for instance. You gotta start somewhere, and tradeoffs have to be made.
And I know this is harsh only five games in, but this is what you have to look at if championships are your goal. Maybe this will prove to be Philo’s low point, and he’ll improve the rest of the way. I certainly hope that’s the case. This is still his first year starting, after all. It does appear that he’ll get plenty more chances to show something considering how long it took to see Tramell Jones in this one.
South Carolina is next, and they’re a mess. As I type this now, I don’t even know if Shane Beamer will be making the trip to Gainesville. I lean towards yes, because I don’t know what they gain by firing him now considering they have an open date after they play Florida.
It’s time to try to go for 1-0 in a new week, I suppose. And maybe reestablish some humility in the meantime.