It’s hard to ask for more from Florida’s demolition of Georgia on Saturday.
Okay, not really. Couldn’t they have hung half a hundred? Just six points in the second half is one-fourth of what they put up in the second quarter alone. With better execution, they could’ve put 60 on the Bulldogs. Spurrier’s teams dropped 52 them twice, and you can count on one hand the number of other times in the series in which UF got even 40.
But setting aside “getting greedy” as its own category of complaint, the Gators checked all the boxes. I’ll start by running down my keys to the game.
Did the defense get off the field? You betcha. UGA was just 2-of-13 on third downs and 1-of-3 on fourth downs. The Gators picked off three passes too. Time of possession went to Florida 37:26 to 22:34. Check.
Did Florida go up early? Eh, well, how do we define “early”? UF spotted the Bulldogs 14 easy ones in the first five minutes of the game primarily by allowing big plays. Those two series gave UGA half of their points and basically half of their yards (136 of 277, 49%). The Gator offense caught fire after that, though, scoring 38 offensive points to their opponent’s zero offensive points the rest of the half. Georgia played from two or three scores behind the entire second half, giving the desired “they’re bad at coming back” effect. Mostly check.
Did the Gators run adequately? By most measures traditional or modern, no. Dameon Pierce needed 15 carries to break 50 yards, and his success rate was 26.7%. Malik Davis’s success rate was 11%, and while Nay’Quan Wright’s was 40%, he got 15 yards on five carries. Kadarius Toney finished in the red. Emory Jones had a couple — as in, two — nice carries I guess.
However for what UF needed in this game, it was adequate. Only two rushes went for a loss. No one fumbled. Georgia keeping laser focus on Toney meant other things opened up. And the running backs, for their part, were killers in the pass game. Pierce, Davis, and Wright all finished with 20 yards or more per reception. Five players had catches of at least 30 yards, and three of them were the tailbacks.
I told you to ignore stats about the series history and rushing yards in a game. I was right. Take out the one sack and the kneel-down at the end and Zamir White still personally outrushed the Florida team by a yard. I said it wouldn’t matter, and it didn’t. The run just had to exist enough to keep Georgia from dropping a ton of guys every snap, and it did. Check, from me anyway.
Beyond that, Florida got a statement win over a hated rival that has outperformed them in recent years. Kirby Smart may have successfully rebuilt Alabama in the East, but so far he has built a model of 2008-13 Alabama that Nick Saban himself started leaving behind, well, after 2013.
Dan Mullen is building a modern program that aligns with the current state of the art. I’m not ready to take his defensive coordinator off of the hot seat; there were an awful lot of bad passes and drops from Georgia that helped UF’s defense.
But the offense. Oh, that offense. Mullen has it humming at a level we haven’t seen since 2007-08 but in an entirely different way than in 2007-08. Kyle Trask and Tim Tebow are completely different players, and the former is running a completely different offense than the latter did. We will see Mullen get back to some of that old stuff with Emory Jones and Anthony Richardson, but for now, a red zone run against UGA and a couple of surprise QB Powers like we saw against Mizzou is about it for the Tebow-like offense.
Mullen is not now and may never be the recruiter that Smart is. They’re two different kinds of cats, and that’s okay. I know that Georgia was missing a lot of key players on the defense, and it really showed with clean pockets (NT Jordan Davis) and no safety eraser plays (Richard LeCounte).
Mullen also did things to roast first stringers like how the running back passes torched LB Monty Rice. Rice may have been slowed a little by a foot injury first sustained against Alabama, but he was still out there playing. Plus if you believe the recruiting hype, and certainly if you buy into it to the extent that Bulldog fans do, the backups in Athens are supposed to be elite too. The talent difference as measured by the Team Talent Composite did not exist.
The only thing you could realistically ask for different would be Kyle Pitts not going out and staying out with apparent concussion concerns. As of writing I haven’t seen anything concrete about the prognosis for Pitts. I will say don’t buy into people saying the UF offense slowed down with him out. Trask threw a touchdown to his replacement two plays after the big hit, and the offense then tacked on ten more points after even that to close out the first half.
The offense didn’t score nearly as much in the second half, but Mullen said afterwards that he managed the game differently to preserve the lead. Plus, Trask starts making some questionable throws with big leads as we previously saw in the second half against South Carolina. The first pick-six was not his fault; the second almost-pick-six entirely would’ve been.
Pitts’s health worry aside, this game had everything. Florida won with a flood of unstoppable offense, which is how I think a majority of Gator fans want to win. Mullen’s strength beat out Smart’s strengths.
Florida didn’t beat Georgia. It crushed Georgia. There’s your statement win.