OXFORD, Miss. — Dan Mullen and Steve Spurrier live in the same Gainesville neighborhood. That's topical because what Mullen's offense did to Ole Miss in Saturday's Southeastern Conference opener was very much in the Spurrier "Fun-N-Gun" neighborhood, which got Mullen thinking after rolling up 642 yards in fifth-ranked Florida's 51-35 shootout defeat of the Rebels that ushered in the league's post-pandemic era.

"That's at least deserving of a nice bottle of wine," Mullen said. 

A vintage line, for sure, and fitting of the vintage performance turned in by fifth-year senior quarterback Kyle Trask, who passed for a career-high 416 yards and threw six touchdowns to join LSU's Joe Burrow, the 2019 Heisman Trophy winner, as the only players in league history to hurl a half-dozen scores in an SEC opener. Four of Trask's touchdowns went to tight end and All-America front-runner Kyle Pitts, a pretty vintage dude in his own right. Pitts hauled in eight passes for 170 yards in his role as lead playmaker for a unit that set a UF total offense mark in SEC play, breaking the mark set by Spurrier's 2001 squad when those Rex Grossman-led Gators cranked out 640 in a 52-0 shutout of Mississippi State. 

Trask completed passes to 11 different receivers without a turnover on his way to connecting on 30 of his 42 attempts, with touchdowns of 1, 16, 71 and 17 yards to Pitts, plus a 22-yarder to senior wideout Trevon Grimes and 16-yarder to senior wingback Kadarius Toney. UF (1-0) also rushed for 196 yards, tallied 32 first downs, went 6-for-10 on third down, 5-for-5 in the red zone, turned the ball over just once and averaged 8.7 yards per play. 

"We had a great game plan. We had answers for every look they were showing us and we had some great checks that we executed well," Trask said after becoming the first Florida QB to surpass 400 yards in a game since Tim Tebow, in his final game, dropped a school-record 482 yards on Cincinnati in the Sugar Bowl following the 2009 season. "Overall, it's just a great team win. Everybody executed from start to finish." 

Well, not everybody on the team in the orange and blue. The Florida defense had a tough afternoon against an Ole Miss team in its first game under Coach Lane Kiffin. The Rebels nearly matched the Gators in yards with a stunning 613 (the fourth-highest ever in SEC play), as sophomore quarterback Matt Corral, the one time UF commit, hit 22 of 31 attempts for 395 yards, three touchdowns, one interception, and rushed for 50 of his team's 170 yards. 

For those keeping score at home, that's 1,255 combined yards. 

Or just shy of three-quarters of a mile.

Ole Miss (0-1) just couldn't match Florida's scoring prowess, be it Trask finishing drives or junior Evan McPherson booting three field goals, including a career-best 55-yarder that marked the third-longest in UF history.  The score was tied at 14 early in the second quarter, but the Gators built a 28-14 lead at halftime, then extended it to 35-14 when the Kyle-to-Kyle tandem bombed the Rebels for a 71-yard touchdown two plays into the second half. UF led by at least 15 points the rest of the way. 

"We had a lot of chances to make plays in this game and change the outcome. We didn't do that," Kiffin said. "That's a top-five or 10 team in the country. If you're going to beat those guys, you can't make the mistakes we made. In order to beat teams like that, you have to play almost perfect. We did not do that." 

The Gators stole the early momentum from the home team after the Rebels, on the game's first series, drove 52 yards over 13 plays. Along the way, UF senior free safety Shawn Davis was ejected for a helmet-to-helmet hit, which was problematic given senior Brad Stewart Jr. was not available to play. Ole Miss failed on a fourth-and-3 from the Florida 19 when linebacker Brenton Cox Jr., the transfer from Georgia, sacked Matt Corral. 

Enter Trask, who promptly marched the Gators 77 yards in 13 plays, hitting wideout Jacob Copeland for 18 yards, getting a third-down pass interference call against Ole Miss linebacker Asante Cistrunk, and eventually dinking a 1-yard touchdown pass off play-action to Pitts for a 7-0 edge at the 5:48 mark of the first period. 

The Rebels were neither impressed nor unfazed. 

Corral shook off an 11-yard sack by linebacker Ventrell Miller, first, by converting a third-and-19 strike down the middle of the UF secondary to Elijah Moore for 28 yards to the UF 46. Two plays later, Corral dropped and bombarded the back end of the Gators' defense, with Dontario Drummond racing past strong safety Donovan Stiner, to pull in a 46-yard touchdown on a wide-open deep post route. It was 7-all with 3:43 left in the period. 

Mullen went to backup quarterback Emory Jones on the Gators' second series. On Jones' first play, he was pressured rolling to his right and tried to force a throw deep downfield despite pressure from charging defensive back Ryder Anderson. Jones got nothing on the throw, which looked more like punt. It was intercepted by defensive back A.J. Finley at the Ole Miss 45. 

On first down, the Rebels got tricky with a double pass. It worked. Drummond hit running back Jerrion Ealy for 45 yards to the UF 10, but two plays later Cox got pressure and batted Corral's pass into the air long enough to be intercepted by freshman defensive lineman Gervon Dexter. 

It took only four plays for Florida to retake the lead, thanks to a 50-yard run by Toney to the Ole Miss 22. On the next snap, Trask fired a rocket into the right corner of the end zone for a 22-yard scoring strike to wideout Trevon Grimes for a 14-7 lead 50 seconds before the end of a wild first quarter.  The second quarter was no less frenetic. 

The Rebels got going again with an 18-yard run by tailback Snoop Connor, followed by a scramble of 11 yards by Corral on third-and-11. When Corral faced another third-and-long on the next set of downs, he dashed for 17 yards to the UF 27. After a pass to wideout Elijah Moore for a dozen yards, Corral stuck a 14-yard TD strike to Drummond for his second scoring catch to tie the game at 14 three minutes into the period. 

The Florida defense was on its heels and, it just happened, would remain there the rest of the game.

"We've tackled twice since the Orange Bowl," said Mullen, who because of COVID had staged just two scrimmages since his 2019 squad ended the season with a 34-26 win over Virginia to capture its second straight New Year's Six bowl and finish 11-2. "Normally you've got a lot of spring ball, you're getting physicality, you're getting tackling. We only did two of our scrimmages and they were spread out over this long period of time. We were down some guys defensively [in the game] and hopefully we get some guys back for next week." 

He had one more add. 

"And, obviously give them credit," Mullen said. 

How much credit? Well, the Rebels' whopping 613 yards were the third-most ever gained against the Gators, behind only the 672 by Alabama in 2014 (a 42-21 loss at Tuscaloosa) and 629 by Nebraska in the Fiesta Bowl 1995 national-championship game (a 62-24 loss). 

This game's end result, clearly, was better. 

With the offensive back and forth, the first punt wasn't for more than 20 minutes into the game and came courtesy of UF's Jacob Finn. The second came on the very next series with one by the Rebels' Mac Brown, who booted it back to the Gators at their 22. Trask hit Copeland with a pair of completions of 14 and 12 yards, two to Toney for 15 and 16, then another, after a holding penalty, to Grimes for 12 to the Ole Miss 16. From there, Trask stood strong in the pocket and feathered a perfect touch pass to Toney in the back of the end zone for a 21-14 lead with 3:10 before the half. 

Barely three minutes later, the Gators were up two touchdowns before heading to the locker room. Trask completed passes of 15 to Davis, then 21 and 19 to Pitts, before hitting Pitts a third time on the march for a 16-yard score just five seconds before intermission. 

Trask on Pitts: "He can do a lot of things and is a matchup nightmare for defenses. He's too big for corners and too fast for linebackers, so he gives defenses a lot of trouble."

An understatement. 

On the second snap of the second half, Trask dropped, got a nice blitz pickup from tailback Dameon Pierce, and found — guess who? — Pitts down the middle of the defense in a brutal mismatch against a linebacker. He caught the pass in stride behind a pair of Rebels defenders. Pitts gave one of them, linebacker Jacquez Jones, a shove while running away from him on the way to a 71-yard touchdown just 19 seconds into the period. It was 35-14. 

"They kind of played a look where it was a 'Mike' linebacker on me, and when we had that we just knew it was me versus him," said Pitts, whose four TD receptions equaled the school mark held jointly by wide receivers Jack Jackson (against New Mexico State in 1994) and Ike Hilliard (against Tennessee in 1995). "I just felt like once I caught it and stiff-armed him that I had to use my speed to keep going." 

He did, but just as quickly, the Rebels made it 35-21. Corral and Moore hooked up for a 57-yard gain, which was followed on the next play by Ealy's 18-yard touchdown run up the gut of the UF defense.  Just 1:17 into the second half, both teams had 75-yard TD drives, but Florida still led by two touchdowns.

The Gators didn't answer that Rebels TD with one of their own, but did get that 55-yard field goal from sophomore McPherson. Two possessions later, McPherson added a 37-yarder to cap a drive engineered by Jones, who had a 22-yard run and 30-yard completion to Grimes before the kick made it 41-21 with 5:06 left in the third. And two possessions after that, McPherson was good from 23 to increase the margin to 44-21 with 12:54 to go in the game. 

Corral went 5-5 for 81 yards on his team's first drive of the final quarter, hitting Kenny Yeboah for an 8-yard score and and Jonathan Mingo for the two-point conversion with 11:00 left on the clock. That cut the lead to 15 points at 44-29. 

On UF's next series, the Ole Miss defense, at least for moment, thought it had stopped Trask by forcing a third-down incompletion with 10:08 to go. But blitzing linebacker MoMo Sanago was called for roughing the quarterback after taking Trask to the ground upon his delivery.

"A ton of momentum changed on that play," Kiffin said. 

The penalty gave the Gators a first down, which eventually led to Trask's sixth TD of the game, which went — of course — to Pitts to put both guys into elite company and put Florida ahead 51-27. 

The Rebels added an oh-by-the way late touchdown and two-point conversion and also recovered an onside kick en route to topping the 600-yard threshold late and making for quite the gaudy statistical afternoon.  But the visitors left with the "W."

"It was just great to be out there playing football again and for our guys to have this game in the books," Mullen said. "We have a lot of things to clean up, a lot of things we have to get better from Week 1 and Week 2. But the questions of 'Are we playing next week? When do we play? How long's training camp? When is this ever going to happen? Are we ever going to get to a game?' … We got a game." 

And a victory. And a lot of yards to process and review. 

On both sides of the ball.