Florida Gators

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – The sting of the 1991 season-ending loss to Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl was still very much a thing when Florida quarterback Shane Matthews approached Coach Steve Spurrier with a question about the 1992 season. Matthews, looking to his senior year, wanted to know what the Gators were going to do about an offensive line that was losing its core to graduation. 
 
When UF opened the '92 season, its reconfigured O-line included a true freshman at left tackle. 
 
After three games it included a true freshman at right tackle, also. 
 
Why does this matter? Well, the subject is topical because of Florida's 2023 season-opener Thursday night at 14th-ranked and reigning Pac-12 champion Utah, a showdown that has engendered some conversation about the last time the Gators played a regular-season game on a Thursday. 
 
The date was Oct. 1, 1992, and it didn't go well. At least, not at first. 
 
"Our offense stunk," Spurrier said after 24th-ranked Mississippi State clobbered No. 14 UF 30-6 on ESPN that night 31 years ago, handing the Gators a second straight lopsided defeat and sending them to a sub-.500 record (1-2) for what would be the only time over Spurrier's 12 seasons on the Florida sidelines. "I don't have any words for it."
 
Matthews didn't either. He entered '92 as a two-time Southeastern Conference Player of the Year and Heisman Trophy contender and was benched in the fourth quarter of that game in Starkville – about four hours from his hometown of Pascagoula, Miss. – following the worst performance of his otherwise stellar career. Matthews finished 17 of 38 for 224 yards, no touchdowns, five interceptions and was sacked seven times. 
 
"I embarrassed myself and the rest of the team tonight," Matthews lamented. "I don't know what else to say." What happened on that cowbell-clanging night, though, was not as significant as how the Gators (Spurrier and his staff, specifically) reacted to it. 
 
With changes. 
 
"Maybe we'll shake it up a little bit this week and challenge some of our players who are starters now," Spurrier announced at the start of the next week. "They're some players we need to look at." 
 
The next time Florida took the field, at home against LSU, Green had some classmate company on the offensive line. The Gators benched fourth-year senior right tackle Ryan Taylor and replaced him with Jason Odom, giving the team two true freshmen as bookends on the O-line in what was believed at the time to be a first in program history. Both turned out to be excellent, long-term solutions.
 
Florida beat LSU 28-21 and took off on seven-game winning streak that included a stunning upset of No. 7 Georgia that shifted the conference race. After totaling 20 points in their losses at Tennessee and Mississippi State in Weeks 2 and 3, the Gators averaged nearly 28 points over those seven victories to clinch a spot in the inaugural SEC Championship Game against No. 2 Alabama, which would go on to claim the national title. UF lost a heartbreaker in Birmingham, Ala., but finished the season with a 27-10 defeat of North Carolina State in the Gator Bowl (for a 9-4 final record) and rode that momentum (and those freshmen tackles) into the next season; and the one after that. 
 
Florida, of course, won the next four SEC championships (three with Green and Odom on the o-line flanks), including the 1996 national crown.
 
It was quite the bounce-back from the debacle in the Magnolia State, a development that prompted then-Athletic Director Jeremy Foley to vow never to play another Thursday night game again. On his watch, the Gators did not. 
 
What will this Thursday nighter bring?