A fired up Dan Mullen fires up the crowd after a first-half scuffle between the Gators and Missouri on Saturday night. (Photo: Hannah White/UAA Communications)
Gators Fight Off Slow Start, Storm Past Missouri
Sunday, November 1, 2020 | Football, Scott Carter
Share:
By: Scott Carter, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – In discussing Saturday night's matchup with Missouri, Gators head coach Dan Mullen revealed earlier in the week he considered the Tigers under first-year head coach Eliah Drinkwitz a team worthy of being in the Top 25.
In fact, Mullen said he ranked the Tigers when he submitted his ballot for the Amway Coaches Poll following their win at Kentucky.
There's no way Mullen, who transformed into Darth Vader afterward, has the Tigers ranked this week.
Not after No. 10 Florida's 41-17 runaway victory on Halloween at the Swamp. Not after scoring 28 consecutive points following an interception return for a touchdown by Tigers cornerback Jarvis Ware. And certainly not after watching Tigers linebacker Trajan Jeffcoat drill UF quarterback Kyle Trask with a late hit on a Hail Mary attempt on the final play of the first half.
Jeffcoat's upper-body blow, which failed to draw a flag from the officials but drew plenty of ire from the Gators, sparked a melee between the teams right before halftime that resulted in the ejection of veteran Gators defensive lineman Zachary Carter and freshman linebacker Antwuan Powell, and Missouri senior defensive lineman Tre Williams for fighting. Every player on both teams received an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty due to the scrum, which the Southeastern Conference will review on Sunday to determine if others could face penalty.
The Gators led 20-7 when Williams jumped offsides on what appeared to be the final play of the first half. However, according to rules, the Gators received a final snap with no time on the clock. Many players and coaches were already leaving the field and headed toward the locker room. Once play resumed, Trask threw deep from Florida's 48 to the Missouri end zone but the pass directed toward tight end Kyle Pitts fell incomplete.
As the teams began to exit Florida Field, Mullen raced toward the Missouri side to say something to Drinkwitz. Words were exchanged and soon several players started to throw punches as coaches and other personnel tried to intervene.
"Our guys thought they took a late hit on our quarterback,'' Mullen told the SEC Network at the end of the game. "They are going to protect him. That's our guy. It is what it is, an emotional game sometimes. I'm not real pleased on how it all played out."
The emotional outburst did more for the Gators than the Tigers.
Before joining his team in the locker room at halftime, Mullen urged the crowd to cheer by flapping his arms up and down. He did the same when he came out for the second half. Meanwhile, Trask was the first UF player to run out of the tunnel for the second half.
Drinkwitz had this to say after the game: "I have no idea what they were yelling about. We'll take a look at the film and I'm sure we'll find out more tomorrow when we watch the tape. Film doesn't lie."
What the film shows is Jeffcoat hitting Trask and sending him flying to the ground after he had clearly released the ball. It's the kind of play that draws a penalty more often than not in today's game, which emphasizes the importance of protecting the quarterback more than any point in history.
The hit didn't slow down Trask.
Following a pair of touchdown throws to Kadarius Toney in the first half, Trask threw two more in the second half, becoming the first UF quarterback to throw four or more touchdowns in four consecutive games. He now has 18 in the season's first four games, which established a new SEC record according to the SEC Network. Trask finished 21 of 36 for 345 yards, four touchdowns and an interception.
"It was really cool just to see my teammates have my back,'' he said. "At the end of the day, if that happens, the whole team is going to have to back you up. That's just how this team is. That's just what is so special about this team. I think the team just got fired up after that, may have wanted a penalty or something. At the end of the day we just came together, came into the locker room and had a lot of energy, bouncing around. We played with a lot of that energy … and tempo and really got the ball rolling the second half."
While the feisty brawl added an unexpected twist to Halloween for the Gators, so did their defensive performance minus several key players in the secondary and kicker Evan McPherson. Following a two-week layoff in the wake of a COVID-19 outbreak on the team after a loss at Texas A&M on Oct. 10, the loss of starting defensive backs Marco Wilson, Donovan Stiner and Shawn Davis did not help Florida's cause Saturday night. All three were on the unavailable list, as were Chester Kimbrough and C.J. McWilliams, two players who are part of the rotation in the secondary.
Gators quarterback Kyle Trask and the Gators ran away from Missouri in the second half of their 41-17 win on Saturday night at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. (Photo: Courtney Culbreath/UAA Communications)
Rather than wilt from their absence, the Gators turned in their best defensive performance of the season, holding the Tigers to 248 yards of total offense as Trask and Co. rolled up 514. The Gators held Missouri to 3 of 15 third-down conversions, a huge improvement considering opponents had converted 59 percent of third downs through the first three games.
"I think that on the outside they've gotten a lot of criticism,'' said Mullen, who donned a Darth Vader costume during his postgame press conference as part of a Halloween tradition. "They haven't gotten a lot of criticism from the inside, from us. I can't wait until we get to play a game with a full defense, you know, it kind of seems like we're playing with a partial defense every game of the season right now."
Safety Brad Stewart Jr. said the defense, ranked 13th in the SEC (495.0 yards per game) prior to Saturday, understood what needed to be done to overcome the unique challenge of a two-week layoff and several missing pieces.
"We tried to come out and play together and really try to make a statement,'' Stewart said. "And really, we just had to come out and play as a team. We all had to communicate. We had to talk, and that's what we did. We know that we had to step up. I think all the young guys, they know that their name was called. They know that when it's your time to step up – that's something Coach Mullen preach on all the time for a young guy on the back end or for any player.
"I think you've got to be ready when your number's called because anything can happen this year. We all knew before the season started that we had to step up; anything could happen this year."
As the calendar turns to November, the Gators open preparation for their SEC East showdown against Georgia next week in Jacksonville. It's a game the Gators have eyed since the start of the season.
On the final night of October, they started slow and could muster only a pair of field goals by replacement kicker Chris Howard on their first two drives. Slowly, the offense began to assert itself behind Trask and Toney, who had touchdown receptions of 18 and 30 yards in the first half.
Of course, the real wakeup call came on the final play of the first half.
"I ain't going to say it energized us, but, you know, everybody saw the play,'' running back Dameon Pierce said. "Everybody saw what happened. Everybody is going to have their own opinion about it."
That they will. If the Gators go on and do what they hope to do this season – earn the program's first berth in the College Football Playoff – they have to beat Georgia.
And if they reach where they want to go, the Missouri game will be looked upon as the turning point.
"Our guys told them don't hit the quarterback,'' Mullen said. "Really unfortunate situation. It's not something we condone, obviously. It's not something that you really want to see in the game at all. I'll tell you this: I give our coaches and our players a lot of credit. And I give Coach Drinkwitz and the Missouri staff and their players a lot of credit because how tense that first half ended just shows the class of both teams being able to come out the second half and just play football."
