Florida is scoring points at a rate that we haven’t seen in a while. The jury’s still out as to whether the team will end up at a place we’ve literally never seen before, but there’s a chance it does.
First things first. The Gators scored 63 points against Arkansas, 56 of them by the offense. It was the most points scored in an SEC game for UF since, well, putting 56 on a hapless Vandy team last year. Jonathan Greenard had an 80-yard fumble return touchdown in that one, so it wasn’t all offensive.
The last 50-point outing in conference play before that was a 55-14 victory in 2010 against, you guessed it, a hapless Vandy team. That one featured two non-offensive scores, a fumble return touchdown for Terron Sanders and a blocked punt return score for Solomon Patton.
You have to go all the way back to the 63-5 win over Kentucky in 2008 to find the last time the Gators put 56 offensive points on an SEC opponent. UK was a bit like this year’s Arkansas team, as those Wildcats were fine but nothing special and finished 7-6. Florida made them look like a hapless Vandy team on that day. A pick-six from Ahmad Black in that one made the offensive/non-offensive scoring split the same as last Saturday.
A huge difference between the performances at hand is that the Gators had three passing and five rushing touchdowns against Kentucky back then. On Saturday, UF had seven passing TDs and one rushing TD. In fact, the Gators have only five rushing touchdowns in six games in 2020. Dan Mullen has put together about as potent an offense as he had back then but has done it in a completely different way.
And yes, I am going there. This year’s is easily UF’s best offense since 2008, and time will tell if it ends up even better.
The highest-scoring team in program history was the 1996 squad at 47.0 points per game. They scored fewer than 40 points just three times in 13 games: 35 on the road at Tennessee, 28 on the road in a sleepy outing against Vandy, and 21 in the loss at FSU.
The ’96 team stands alone at the top. After it is a cluster of five teams: 2001 at 44.8 PPG, 2008 at 43.6, 1995 at 42.9, 2007 at 42.5, and 1994 at 41.4 PPG. We can argue about whether defenses were generally better in the ’90s or 2000s, but both sets of UF offenses were ahead of the curve for their times.
The 2020 team? It’s filling the gap between ’96 and the runners up at 45.8 points per game. It’s doing so despite:
- Playing only SEC opponents
- Having faced by far the toughest defense on the schedule, Georgia
- Having faced the second-best defense on the schedule, Texas A&M
- Not scoring in the 4th quarter against South Carolina
- Scoring only six points in the second half against Georgia
Arkansas’s defense has been good but not spectacular this year. It looks better than it should because it baited Matt Corral into throwing six interceptions in one game. In the SP+ ratings heading into last weekend, the Hogs were 47th in defense.
Two better defenses remain, Tennessee (29th prior to last weekend) and Kentucky (34th). Both of them like to run a lot and thereby shorten games, but the Gators might still put up big numbers on them thanks to a quick-strike ability and quarterback issues for those teams. Can you imagine penciling in fewer than 40 points against those two?
And then there are two more opponents, a godawful Vandy team and LSU. The Gators can pick any number they want against the Commodores, who allowed 41 points to South Carolina for crying out loud.
The Tigers, well, we’ll see if that makeup game actually happens. I’ve seen some suggestions out there for shuffling games around to allow both the LSU-UF and LSU-Bama games to be made up, but if push comes to shove, it makes more sense for the Tide to play the Tigers because it’s a divisional game.
But assuming the LSU game is made up, Kyle Trask will probably shred the Tiger defense in another name-your-score game. They made Bo Nix look like a competent passer. Bo Nix! Marinate on that for a minute.
If you give the Gators 40 each against Tennessee and Kentucky and 55 each against Vanderbilt and LSU — seemingly doable round numbers, and conservative in the case of Vandy — the season-long scoring average will be 46.5 points per game. That’s pretty dang close to the 1996 team’s scoring average.
There’s still the SEC Championship Game and whatever bowl season looks like to go after the regular season, of course. I don’t feel great about Alabama’s receivers running free behind Florida’s secondary, but the Tide did give up 48 points to Ole Miss. The Gators could easily drop more than 40 on them given how well Trask is playing and how suspect Bama’s defense has been against elite pass attacks for years now. As for the bowl, your guess is as good as mine.
The 2020 UF team will need to run up the score on the regular season opponents to have a chance at breaking the ’96 team’s record. We’re talking stuff like putting up 70 on Vandy. I’m not sure the Gators will do that because Mullen has already shown a willingness to take his foot off the gas late, and he’ll do a lot of running to preserve leads. Of course, he called for a lot of running against Arkansas too and the team still broke 60.
It’s remarkable that we’re even having this discussion, though. I never would’ve guessed that Trask would be tracking Joe Burrow’s 2019 so closely through six games, nor that there would be a reason to track scoring versus the 1996 team.
But here we are. You’re watching history happen. Enjoy the ride while it lasts.