Buddy Martin Show: Florida, South Carolina Both Need a Bounce-Back Saturday
The morning after in Gainesville felt like a fog. Missouri 45, Florida 17 — a thorough beating in Columbia that nobody saw coming from a 4-0 team fresh off knocking off Ole Miss.
But it's homecoming week in The Swamp, and South Carolina is limping into town in even worse shape. The Gamecocks just watched Kentucky go for two and convert, and they're still winless in the SEC. Two stung teams. One bounce-back. That's why Wednesday night's Buddy Martin Show dubbed Saturday "the Bounce Back Bowl."
Oh — and one more reason to be in your seat early: Steve Spurrier takes the field after the first quarter to honor the 500th game in The Swamp, introducing the 1966 team he played on and the 1996 national championship team he coached. Fitting for homecoming.
"One of these teams is going to win it, Tony — and I don't know which one"
"It's the bounce back bowl — one of these teams is going to win it, Tony, and I don't know which one," Buddy said.
Vegas keeps moving on this one: "I can't believe Florida was a 14-point favorite and now it's dropped to 12 and a half."
The line kept moving after the show. By Thursday night, ESPN listed Florida as an 11.5-point favorite, with the total at 59.5 (DraftKings).
Tony Barnhart ("Mr. College Football") made his call anyway: "The Gators will have a nice bounce back against South Carolina. I'm worried about our boy Shane Beamer — I don't know that he's going to make it out of this whole situation."
Sumrall's Big-Win Lesson
Barnhart pointed to the real lesson of the week: Jon Sumrall learned that "the toughest thing to manage in the Southeastern Conference as a head coach is a big win... the whole world is telling you how good you are."
Florida didn't lose because the Gators were reading their press clippings — Sumrall killed that talk the Sunday after Ole Miss, telling his team that win was over, period, and that you can get humble in a hurry around here.
But Missouri's Eli Drinkwitz did his homework, and his postgame comment was the one that stung the most: "There's film out there now on these guys... we kind of knew what was happening."
Ali Peek Wilbur's autopsy of the tape was blunt. So much miscommunication up front — linemen going to the wrong gap, two guys blocking the same defender while someone else ran through completely untouched. Missouri's offense looks enough like Florida's that its defense had essentially seen the whole thing in practice all week.
And the defense? The big watch item Saturday is whether it can tackle at all. Nine explosive plays in the third quarter alone accounted for 67 percent of Missouri QB Austin Simmons' yardage — against four, five, and six rushers alike. No pressure, no matter how many came.
Sumrall's own diagnosis: "If it's just one thing it would be easier to fix, but it's a multitude of things."
Faulkner's Tendency Rule
Nobody on the panel is panicking about Buster Faulkner's play-calling, though. Buddy reminded everyone of the offensive coordinator's own rule: "Faulkner had a rule... if we run a play one time and it works, we throw it out — that's pretty hard to get a tendency from."
Georgia-Alabama: The Other Game That Matters
Barnhart has watched Alabama get better every single week, and he made his pick: the Crimson Tide quarterback has "superstar written all over" him, and he sees "a 24-21 kind of game" — with Alabama winning it, setting up a rematch with Georgia in the SEC Championship Game.
Scouting the Gamecocks: Sellers and Harbor
Don't sleep on South Carolina's roster. Loren Meadows flagged receiver Nick Harbor — the 6-foot-8 freak sitting at the top of The Athletic's "freaks list" — and quarterback LaNorris Sellers, who remains the ultimate X-factor: "When LaNorris Sellers is going, he's like the best version of what Anthony Richardson was, essentially."
But the Gamecocks haven't won a conference game and have blown big leads multiple times this season. When Buddy put the money question to Ali — "If you said you can have four and a half points in South Carolina, you had to make a choice with your money, what would you do?" — she didn't blink: "I'd put my money on Florida."
The Sky Is Not Falling
Here's the perspective check the whole panel kept coming back to: "I don't think the sky is falling," Ali said. "The sky is literally falling outside," she laughed at the Gainesville rain, "but I don't think the sky is falling in the way that I think some people do."
Every goal Florida set is still on the table — including, mathematically, the playoff. Ali's preseason pick still stands: 9-3, with the losses coming to Texas and Georgia. Buddy couldn't find more than seven and a half wins back in August.
And Sumrall? His message after Missouri was the kind Loren Meadows said Florida fans have been waiting years to hear: you've "got to bow up like men... get back to the fundamentals, because that's all you can lean on." As Meadows put it, "you can tell so much more about a team in a loss than a win."
Saturday at The Swamp. Homecoming. Somebody's bouncing back.
Watch the Show
Watch the full show here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFqwdeIf2MY
(Segment: "Who Wins the Bounce Back Bowl" — Bounce Back Bowl framing, line movement, and Barnhart's Florida pick)
(Segment: "The Sky Is Not Falling" — Ali's money on Florida, why every goal is still on the table, and Sumrall's "bow up like men" response. Barnhart's 24-21 Alabama pick closes the Bounce Back Bowl segment above.)
(Segment: "Fixing Florida's O-Line and Defense" — the Missouri autopsy, Drinkwitz's film comment, and what has to change Saturday)
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