Will Muschamp still hasn’t squeezed all the soft out of his Florida Gators.
An inability to do the hard work Saturday, beginning with the basic goal of running the ball more than a few yards at a time, helped to make a monster out of Georgia, the same team that barely got by 1-8 Kentucky a week ago.
This disaster was entirely Florida’s fault, cemented in place by half a dozen turnovers, and because of it the Gators have no claim to anything but a 7-1 record.
It takes more than that, at least this season, to guarantee a trip to the SEC title game in Atlanta. It takes more than wins over a couple of top 10 teams, too, for that’s what LSU and South Carolina were when Florida took them down.
“We’ve got a solid football team,” Muschamp said as thousands of howling Dawgs fans exploded into the Jacksonville night to celebrate this sassy 17-9 upset. “We’re gonna be fine.”
What they’re not going to be is crowned. Leave it to Georgia to make a mirage of Florida’s spectacular No. 2 position in the early BCS standings. This rancid rivalry could feature 20 Gators victories in a row, but there’s always an illogical outcome like this one waiting to shock everyone senseless.
Longtime Bulldogs coach Mark Richt knows the drill. You grab momentum any way possible and shake it up like a bottle of champagne for the thirsty Georgia masses. That’s why he let his entire team run into the end zone to celebrate a touchdown five years ago while taking down one of Urban Meyer’s Florida teams. That’s why he called for an onside kick Saturday while leading 10-6 midway through the third quarter.
The Bulldogs recovered the ball but gummed the whole thing up by being offsides on the play. Against a Florida team that seemed rattled all afternoon, however, the prank was worth playing. Same goes for all those blitzes that overmatched Jeff Driskel.
Florida’s sophomore quarterback, whose primary strength is protecting the ball, tossed it around like Halloween candy Saturday. He fumbled it on two of the game’s first three offensive plays, yielding a sudden touchdown to Georgia and setting a standard of offensive inefficiency that would demand perfection of the Gators’ defense all day long. He threw two interceptions, too, including a killer in the end zone to end the first half, and that was after having just one pickoff all season long.
“When you become one-dimensional, it’s hard,” Muschamp said. “It puts a lot of pressure on him.”
Truth is, Florida got away with a mediocre performance from its offense in the 44-11 demolition of South Carolina last week. Special teams were the special sauce in that game, but on Saturday, the only sparkle was a 50-yard field goal by Caleb Sturgis.
Georgia quarterback Aaron Murray threw three interceptions, remember, so it could have been worse for the orange-and-blue half of EverBank Field. Black-and-blue is how the Gators felt on their way to the buses. This game wasn’t just taken from them. It was surgically removed, and without anesthetic.
“It was a huge loss,” said Driskel, who gave up huge ground, 45 yards of it, on his five sacks. “We knew what was at stake, and we knew if we handled our business that our goals were in front of us. But there’s still a lot of football to be played.”
Technically, he’s right. Missouri, Louisiana-Lafayette and Jacksonville State are football games to be played, but it will be a month before Florida State provides a chance for real redemption, and a month is a long time to bleed.
Not since 1988 had a Florida team gone without a touchdown against Georgia, and “almost” certainly does not count in this case. To have the Gators’ last chance at a comeback end with tight end Jordan Reed leaping for the goal line and fumbling the ball into the end zone was the final insult. The only thing that could have been worse was scoring that touchdown but failing on the two-point conversion try.
What might we have expected from Florida in overtime but another turnover?
Jarvis Jones, Georgia’s All-America linebacker, certainly didn’t look as if he’d had his fill. Through four quarters, he had a career-high 13 tackles, with two forced fumbles, two fumbles recoveries and three sacks. An extra period would only have felt like second helpings.
For all of the good that has come out of this bounceback season, Muschamp remains on the wrong side of this signature series, losing four times as a Georgia player and twice as Florida’s head coach.
He seethed at Florida’s 10 penalties, some of which gifted Georgia’s balky offense with third-down conversions. He shook his head at the sight of Mike Gilleslee being stoned at the line of scrimmage again and again. He looked downfield to find Florida receivers consistently covered on deeper routes and thus rendered useless.
“Come April, there will be a bunch of their guys on defense in the NFL Draft,” Muschamp said, and he’s right.
In this last glimpse at October, however, what a national television audience saw was the work that Florida still must do. Alabama would have made about 40 points out of an epic Gators flop like this one.
Georgia simply made a rowdy surprise party out of it.
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