Gators head coach Billy Napier on the sideline at the conclusion of Saturday night's loss at Tennessee. (Photo: Maddie Washburn/UAA Communications)
Carter's Corner: Gators Lost to Vols and Themselves
Sunday, October 13, 2024 | Football, Scott Carter
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By: Scott Carter, Senior Writer
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Florida lost to Tennessee on Saturday night in one of the Southeastern Conference's most frenzied rivalries. That is always a harsh biscuit for Gators believers to swallow the morning after.
But what transpired here at sold-out Neyland Stadium seemed worse. The scoreboard — Home 23, Away 17 (overtime) — told the final score but flashed nothing near the whole story.
What it failed to say was that the Gators beat themselves.
Billy Napier addressed the Big L in the room when he opened his postgame press conference in a small room adjacent to Florida's gloomy locker room.
"I do think that we played extremely hard, played with passion, all three parts of our team," Napier said. "Certainly, the tale of the tape is the missed opportunities in the first half on offense. We had many opportunities to score points and left a ton of points out there."
They're preaching that from Pahokee to Panama City on Sunday.
The Gators limped off the field at the end of the first half, dazed by recent events and the accumulation of what-if moments that haunted them throughout the first 30 minutes. Still, they led the No. 8-ranked Vols, 3-0, at intermission in a game that few gave them a chance. Tennessee opened as a 16.5-point favorite, the largest spread in the Vols' favor in the last 50 years.
Chimere Dike on his 27-yard TD catch with 29 seconds left in regulation during Saturday night's loss at Tennessee. (Photo: Lorenzo Vasquez/UAA Communications)
The final play of the half was a gut punch for the Gators. After quarterback Graham Mertz was sacked on third-and-14 from Tennessee's 15, the Gators had to race the field-goal unit onto the field in the final seconds, having used their final timeout of the half two plays earlier. Trey Smack's 43-yard attempt was good, as the Gators snapped the ball right before time expired. However, penalty flags littered the field in the chaos.
The final verdict: a 12-men-on-the-field penalty and a 10-second runoff, officially ending the first half.
"It was relative to an injury, just to be cut and dry,'' Napier said. "It was a substitution error based off an injured player that stayed on the field. That's exactly what it was."
Instead of a six-point lead, Florida clung to its narrow advantage and the memory of many missed opportunities in the first half other than Smack's field goal with 3 minutes, 15 seconds left in the first quarter.
The second quarter was where points went to die for UF.
First, Napier opted to go for it on fourth-and-1 from Tennessee's 18 on the Gators' opening drive of the period. The Gators ran a jet sweep out of the shotgun, and receiver Eugene Wilson III was dropped for no gain, snuffing out Florida's 11-play, 72-yard drive that took more than six minutes off the clock. On the Gators' next possession, the Gators drove 79 yards to Tennessee's 1. However, on first-and-goal, Mertz fumbled, and Vols defensive back James Pearce Jr. recovered.
The Gators were not finished digging their own grave, this time regaining possession when defensive back Sharif Denson picked off Nico Iamaleava for his first career interception. Denson's 20-yard return and a personal foul penalty on the Vols gave the Gators the ball at Tennessee's 11 with 1:11 left before halftime.
The drive went nowhere and ended with a head-scratching sequence, and Smack's field goal negated by the costly penalty.
"You can't cry over spilled milk,'' receiver Chimere Dike, a bright spot for the Gators on Saturday, said afterward. "We got a really good team in the locker room. We just know we got to put things together."
Dike did his part Saturday, catching four passes for a team-high 76 yards and a touchdown. Dike returned two punts for 57 yards, giving the Gators excellent field position twice in the fourth quarter. His biggest play was a 27-yard touchdown catch from freshman quarterback DJ Lagway with 29 seconds remaining that cut Tennessee's lead to 17-16.
Lagway took over for the injured Mertz late in the third quarter when Mertz, while backpedaling on a 13-yard touchdown pass to Arlis Boardingham to put Florida up 10-0, had to leave the game due to a non-contact injury. He returned to the sideline in the fourth quarter on crutches and with a brace on his left knee.
After Lagway's scoring strike to Dike, Florida initially lined up for a two-point conversion, but after shifting into an unbalanced formation that caused Tennessee confusion, the Vols called a timeout. Napier then elected to send the extra-point team onto the field, and Smack's PAT forced overtime in the series for the first time since 1998.
"We had a play that we felt good about, and then obviously they burned their timeout," Napier said. "We were playing pretty good on both sides of our team at that point in time. We thought, 'Let's go play overtime. Let's go give our guys a chance to play some more plays.' Defensively, we kept ourselves in it."
The Gators turned in a second consecutive stellar performance on defense, limiting Tennessee's high-powered offense to 312 total yards. Still, after Smack missed a 47-yard field goal on the first drive of overtime, the Vols took over and drove 25 yards on five plays for just their third win over the Gators in the last 20 meetings. Tailback Dylan Sampson scored on a 1-yard run to send the sold-out crowd home happy.
Meanwhile, the Gators were left to deal with another loss away from home, falling to 3-11 in games away from Ben Hill Griffin Stadium under Napier. They returned to campus in the wee hours of Sunday morning, tired, sleepy and needing rest.
They worked overtime Saturday night. They lost to Tennessee — and they beat themselves.
