Senior defensive lineman Cece Jefferson raises his helmet during the singing of the alma mater amid the post-game celebration of Saturday night's win over LSU, an outcome that shoved the Gators back into the SEC East Division hunt.
Don't Look (or Talk) Now, but Gators are Back in SEC Race
Monday, October 8, 2018 | Football, Chris Harry
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By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The Twitter tenor and general social media buzz surrounding the Florida football program has taken on a seismic shift over the last month. After the Gators lost Sept. 8 at home against Kentucky, suffering the first defeat in that series in the last 32 years, both orange-and-blue skies and jars were falling and half-full, respectively.
Now look.
Better yet, don't look.
Especially, if you're a Florida player.
"Last year kind of helped us move through that a lot," UF wide receiver Josh Hammond said Monday of a 2017 season that opened with three wins in four games, then spiraled into a catastrophic 1-6 finish with a head coach fired along the way. "Just hearing all the stuff from last year on social media like, 'You guys are horrible and blah, blah, blah ... .' I think now that we've lived up to the expectation that everybody expects from us, we're like, 'Ah, nah. We don't really care. Just a year ago, you guys were saying we sucked.' So, we don't really buy into it that much, and we just come out and get ready to go."
With prosperity comes praise, and that's exactly where the Gators (5-1, 3-1), winners of four straight and all the way to No. 14 in the Associated Press Top 25, find themselves in the second week of October as they take aim next at Vanderbilt (3-3, 0-2) come Saturday at noon.
Don't look now, but a UF win this weekend will put a whole other element of intrigue to the Oct. 27 Southeastern Conference East Division showdown against rival and second-ranked Georgia at Jacksonville.
Better yet, don't look. Or listen to all the accolades.
That's exactly what the message from Coach Dan Mullen, his staff and the leaders of this football team will be in the coming days.
Jeremiah Moon (7) and his Florida teammates stared down fifth-ranked LSU Saturday and came away with an emotional 27-19 victory. (Photo: Carly Mackler/UAA Communications).
"The great challenges of the Southeastern Conference is not the individual game; it's the game after game after game after game that you play," Mullen said Monday, two days removed from his team's rousing 27-19 defeat of No. 5 LSU at raucous and reborn Spurrier/Florida Field. "As I think I said after the game and I talked to our team about this morning, for us to become the type of team that we want to have, and the type of team that we want to be this year and the type of program we want to have, you're constantly getting better. You have to get better, and it happens in practice. We need a much better week of practice this week than we had last week, if we expect to win."
After all, what good would it do to put together the kind of performance the Gators did in coming from behind in the fourth quarter to beat the Tigers, only to follow it by laying an emotional letdown egg at Nashville?
Not going to happen, the Gators say.
"It's another SEC road game," said Feleipe Franks, the quarterback of record against LSU, just like he was in winning consecutive road games at Tennessee and Mississippi State in the run-up to the visit from the Tigers. "It's not easy to win road games, let alone just a SEC game in general. So we can't take them lightly. Just got to keep on preparing, keep on having really good practices. We got to have a great practice [Monday] and keep on going and going."
UF played a tremendous defensive game against LSU, limiting the Tigers to 371 yards of total offense, only four of 17 third-down conversions, and forcing three turnovers, including the first two interceptions thrown all season by quarterback Joe Burrow. Both of those interceptions came in the fourth quarter, the first going back 25 yards for a touchdown by safety Brad Stewart that helped seal the victory. LSU had a touchdown drive to start the game and one early in the fourth quarter, but the Gators ultimately walled up when they had to.
In turn, the offense did its part, also when it had to.
After the Tigers took a 19-14 lead with just over 11 minutes to play, Franks led a 75-yard, go-ahead touchdown drive to retake the lead, with the Florida defense finishing matters off, much to the delight of the most enthusiastic crowd to fill the "Swamp" in several seasons.
The last three days have produced a flurry of glowing stories and social media posts praising the direction of the program. The Gators, though, will proceed with caution.
And purpose.
"I think a lot of guys on the team are mature enough to know that there's going to be ups and downs on social media," Hammond said. "The only thing that matters is what we do when we're at practice or what goes on in the locker room and how we prepare for each team, so I don't think we put too much into social media and what anybody else says. We kind of just worry about ourselves."
Mullen reinforced as much.
"I tell them, 'We won, so guess what? Twitter's going to tell you how great you are. So if you like being told how great you are, get back to work, and let's win again. If you like being told that you stink, well then you don't have to work very hard, and everyone will tell us we won't win the game and they'll tell us how bad we are,' " Mullen said. "Because, it's a really short difference, when you walk on campus today and everyone is patting you on the back [versus] only about six inches lower when they're kicking you in the rear end. I like the pat on the back rather than the kick in the rear end, so let's just keep working to keep it six inches higher."
Enter Vandy into the conversation.
Vanderbilt senior Kyle Shurmer has completed 60 percent of his passes for 1,400 yards, nine touchdowns and four interceptions this season.
The Commodores' three wins have been lopsided affairs against non-Power 5 programs in Middle Tennessee, Nevada and Tennessee State. Of their three losses, the two against SEC foes were not close. Vandy got drummed 37-14 by South Carolina and 41-13 Saturday at Georgia.
It's Vanderbilt's first loss that figures to be emphasized (even overemphasized) this week as to just what the Commodores are capable of.
They went to Notre Dame and nearly shocked the Fighting Irish before losing 22-17. The Commodores trailed 16-3 at halftime, but rallied back and had the ball at the Notre Dame 31 with just over a minute to go before being stopped on downs.
Senior quarterback Kyle Shurmer threw for 326 and a touchdown in that one. For the season, he's hit 60 percent of his passes for 1,400 yards, nine touchdowns and four interceptions, and is the triggerman for an offense that ranks eighth in the league. Shurmer going against a Florida pass defense ranked No. 1 in the SEC (148.7 yards allowed per game) will be one of the top pregame storylines.
Vandy doesn't run the ball particularly well (159.0 yards per game, which ranks 13th in the SEC) or often (only South Carolina has fewer rushing attempts), and the Commodores no longer have Gainesville tailback Ralph Webb to haunt them on the ground. Junior Ke'Shawn Vaughn (439 yards, 5 TDs), though, needs to be accounted for, what with that 6.8 yards-per-carry average.
The Gators can't sleep on junior wideout Kalija Lipscomb, either. He leads the conference in receptions with 45 for 496 yards and 6 TDs.
On defense, Vandy ranks 12th in the SEC (398.5 yards per game), including ninth against the run (159.0 per game) and 10th against the pass (233.3).
The Florida defense has thrived on forcing turnovers, with 17, coupled with a pretty good track record for taking care of the ball (just six giveaways). UF's plus-17 takeaway margin is second in all of college football.
But don't tell the Gators how good they are at that, either.
Or anything.
"More than the opponent you're facing, it's yourself and your own attitude of the mental toughness of, can we continually improve and get up every day, right?" Mullen said. "It's like that early morning run. You sit there and you say 'Boy, I've run four days in a row and I ate a salad yesterday for lunch and I'd love to sleep in this morning.' Right? But it's not good. You've got to get up and improve every single day if you want to be successful."
