I’m still not sure what exactly to make of Florida’s win over FSU. I’m writing this not long after the game concluded, so perhaps that’s to be expected. But still.
Florida didn’t play well enough to win by 20. FSU didn’t play well enough to lose by less than 21. But, we got a strange final score of 31-11 with the good guys winning.
Let’s start here. Any time Florida beats FSU in something, it’s a good day. Doubly so when that something is football, the flagship college sport. And the Gators just cruised to a three-score win over the Seminoles. Yesterday was a good day. A very good day.
When you take sack yardage out, Florida had 249 yards of rushing. FSU had 239 total yards, both rushing and passing. Speaking of sacks, the Gators had nine of them for a total of 45 yards lost. No single Seminole running back had even 45 yards gained on the ground for the whole contest.
The Gator defense really powered this win. They forced seven fumbles and recovered four of them (one of FSU’s lost fumbles was on special teams). They were living in the backfield all night. They did occasionally lose track of players or go through bad tackling spells, but they always broke out of it. Everything the Seminole offense did well was difficult, and none of their points ever made the game feel in doubt.
UF is a bit fortunate for how dreadful their opponent was today. They were doing classic things that allow a lesser team to hang around, like dropping passes early, running into stacked boxes, and throwing an end zone interception.
I’m pretty sure the latter was an issue of someone running the wrong route, because no one ever draws up a play to have two receivers in the front corner of the end zone. I don’t know for sure who ran the wrong route, but I have my suspicions. I lean away from the team’s second-leading receiver who will probably play in the NFL and more towards the career backup who the receiver rotation random number generator picked to get major snaps today.
DJ Lagway was heated after that pick. I get why. It probably wasn’t his fault, and it was a long enough pass that the problem of the wrong route may not have been visible when he began his throwing motion.
It was not the freshman phenom’s best game. He would’ve been helped out early on without the drops, but he just had a hard time finding a rhythm for a lot of the first half. The offensive line didn’t do him a ton of favors, as the pass rush did get through too much for comfort. FSU’s pass rush is one of its few bright-ish spots, so some amount of harassment was going to happen, but it was too much given how everything played out.
It’s a reminder that Lagway still is a freshman, and a true freshman at that. He’s had a bad habit of pushing passes high when amped up, and that seemed to happen a fair amount yesterday. He has a problem with throwing intermediate passes high anyway, and the nerves and/or juice from the road environment probably exacerbated it.
And speaking of reminders, it was something of a reminder that Billy Napier hasn’t been great on the road for a lot of his time in Gainesville. He did get a comfortable road win over a bad Mississippi State team that went 0-8 in league play, and he did get a very good performance out of the players in Knoxville. Too bad he himself had a terrible game at Neyland. And then, albeit with the Yale preferred walk-on behind center, UF got blown out at Texas. Florida was never competitive, falling behind 35-0 at the half.
So no, consecutive wins over LSU and Ole Miss did not prove that Napier had actually figured it all out. He still needs to make more changes after last year’s largely successful staff adjustments. He needs to give up play calling and get a real pro to do it, for starters.
But I will say this in his favor: the young guys are all right. The Gator defense has been wracked by injuries, but they kept holding it together to the end. We saw true freshman Gregory Smith getting his first extended play in just his fourth game played this year. Jameer Grimsley made only his second appearance after garbage time in Austin. They kept having to dig deeper and deeper into the roster, and it has somehow turned out okay. I wouldn’t want to go any farther or do it against a more capable team, but it’s been just enough.
I will have a lot to say about Napier, this 2024 team, and the prospects for 2025 in the coming days, weeks, and months. For now, it’s enough to cap off the season with a win over the rival I hate the most. The final win total for the team was 4.5 wins, and they just finished 7-5. Not bad at all.