I have some rules of thumb for gauging the national reaction to Florida games. One of the simplest is this: did anyone on the national beat actually talk about the game?
The early answer is no. I’m not sure any of the sportswriters who aren’t on the Gator beat that I follow on Twitter mentioned anything about the game as it happened other than retweeting the fake punt and Kadarius Toney’s return or the clip of Dan Mullen chewing out Todd Grantham on the sideline. A decent chunk of them were locked in on Vandy-Mizzou for the Sarah Fuller angle, and otherwise they were watching the fireworks of Oklahoma State-Texas Tech, rubbernecking at Penn State-Michigan, or watching Buffalo’s Jaret Patterson roll up 409 rushing yards with eight touchdowns.
As I write this on Sunday morning, I’ve already listened to the overnight instant-reaction podcast from Andy Staples. He played at Florida and lives in Gainesville. He and cohost Max Olson said nothing about the Gator game, though Kyle Trask did come up in a brief discussion about the Heisman race.
So if you’re wondering what the win over Kentucky means in a broader perspective, it’s this: Florida checked a box. They beat Kentucky, and the final score wasn’t close. The guys everyone knows by now — Trask, Kyle Pitts, Toney — accounted for all of the touchdowns, so everyone who didn’t watch the game knows how to discuss it in a way that makes it sound like they did if need be. “What a game for Pitts, isn’t he amazing, Trask keeps rolling, oh, and did you see that punt return by Toney?”
You care about more than the superficial national angle, but I did want to touch on that because it’s another sign of progress for the program. People used to not talk about a Florida-Kentucky game because LOL it’s garbage football. Now, they don’t bother because of course UF was going to win big.
A lot has been made of the Florida defense playing a lot better after Mullen lit into Grantham shortly before halftime. It happened right after a decision about whether to accept or decline a penalty, and I saw at least one beat writer suggest the argument had to do with that.
Maybe, but it wasn’t the first time Mullen let Grantham have it. It might’ve been the longest and most intense version of it, but more than once before that someone in the press box had mentioned Mullen acting unhappy towards his defensive coordinator.
UF locked the Kentucky offense down after that, allowing just 46 total yards in the second half. I’m sure adjustments had to do with that, but also it may just be that the Wildcats ran out of tricks. They had just 27 yards in the second half against Alabama a week prior. UK has been employing a number of misdirection tactics to try to move the ball, and they only have so many of those.
Terry Wilson is just not the same after his 2019 injury, and he’s unbelievably inaccurate beyond about ten yards upfield. UK has gone run-heavy again as a result, but Wilson isn’t as electric as Lynn Bowden was last year. Once defenses give up on respecting everything, get a handle on the sleight of hand stuff, and go all-out on the run, it’s over for the Wildcat offense.
I don’t have all the answers for why Florida isn’t maxing out its potential everywhere. Some of it is personnel, and I will emphasize that the following isn’t personal. I’m sure these guys are giving it their all, but they’re not good enough players for UF to accomplish all of its goals.
Jean Delance has been a liability two years running. Brad Stewart is not a good enough one-on-one cover guy to play star. Donovan Stiner is not an upgrade from Trey Dean. James Houston has had four years to learn to hit the right gap and maintain body control and can’t do it consistently.
There are potential fixes for all of these. Move Richard Gouraige out to tackle and put Ethan White or Josh Braun in at guard. Put Marco Wilson back at star with Jaydon Hill outside, or else have Hill or Chester Kimbrough take a crack at nickel. Roll with Stewart and Dean at safety. Give more linebacker snaps to Ty’Ron Hopper and Jesiah Pierre in the rotation.
I know the answers as to why they’re not doing all this stuff: Mullen prioritizes seniority and experience over nearly everything else, and the younger and less experienced guys have not definitively passed up their elders in practice. They’re passing them up in game action, though, and the time to shuffle up these deficient positions is now and not in a mad scramble while down 14 in the second quarter to Alabama.
Beyond that, the Gators just go through stretches of not looking sharp on both sides of the ball. I know they can play better because we’ve seen them do it this year, but they can’t shake the poor execution spells.
Some of that is just growing pains of becoming an elite program again. What makes some teams elite is their ability to avoid such times, and UF is not there yet.
I really do think there’s also something to the fact that Florida has played a ton of noon games. UF has never been good under any coach at getting up for early games, and few SEC teams are. Years back I did a study for a different site I was writing for and found that the noon time slot by far had more upsets in SEC play than mid-afternoon or night games. The upset rate was about twice as high at noon than for the 3:30 CBS window, and that time slot in turn saw more upsets than prime time contests.
The three games UF has looked the best in were the sequence against Missouri, Georgia, and Arkansas. Those games started at 7:30, 3:30, and 7:00. Every other game has been a noon kick.
The SEC Championship Game will start at 8:00 pm. I think that means we’ll see a better version of the Gators than in most games, which is pretty exciting to think about. I’d like to see UF completely throttle one or both of Tennessee and LSU in an evening game just in general, but also to add more evidence behind my “they don’t play their best at noon” hypothesis.
But while Florida can’t control when TV puts its regular season games, it can control who suits up on the field. The next two games will be a test of Mullen to see if he will stick to his guns with seniority and experience or if he’s willing to shake things up to try to maximize this team’s potential.