GAMECLOCKED! No. 500 Was a Lousy Homecoming In The Swamp

“We haven’t gotten better and improved in certain areas to maybe offset our weaknesses.” — Jon Sumrall

Florida and South Carolina players pile up at the end of a play during Homecoming in The Swamp. Photo by Chris Spears, GatorBait Media.

By Buddy Martin

GatorBaitMedia.com

Looking at it one way, the Florida Gators are right on schedule.

I had them winning four of their first six games. They have.

They just lost two of the wrong ones. And by “lost,” I mean whacked, crushed, stomped — pick whatever word you use when getting your ass kicked that has become too familiar to require a dictionary.

South Carolina 38, Florida 19.

And it wasn’t that close.

Happy Homecoming. Happy 500th game in the Swamp. Somebody save the commemorative ticket. Somebody else hide the film.

Jon Sumrall’s team didn’t merely get punched in the mouth. It took the combination: uppercut, left hook, right cross and one final blow below the belt, right in the jewels, just in case anybody still had the strength to stand up and sing.

The weather delay briefly became Florida’s best defensive strategy.

Unfortunately, they resumed the game.

There was a time when a visitor walking into the Swamp had something to fear. Saturday, the people who should have been afraid were the ones holding season tickets.

One desperate fan sent me this: “Buddy, I don’t see another win!”

I wanted to argue.

Then I looked at Texas and Georgia coming up and decided to save my energy.

A Celebration Nobody Wanted

Who were these guys wearing Florida uniforms?

An early Halloween gathering? Come dressed as a contender?

The head coach and his offensive coordinator got booed for calling a running play in the waning seconds of the first half. Quarterback Aaron Philo got booed, too, and eventually got benched.

Defensive coordinator Brad White probably would have welcomed a bench. Somewhere quiet. Under an assumed name.

We used to have “third and Grantham.”

Now we’ve got “third and White.”

Different name. Same sinking feeling.

Florida has been outscored 83-36 by Missouri and South Carolina over the past two weeks. That isn’t a little turbulence on the road to greatness. That’s the engine making a noise you don’t want to hear.

South Carolina arrived carrying an eight-game SEC losing streak. Its quarterback hadn’t been playing particularly well.

Florida provided the cure.

By the time the Gators were finished helping him, you half expected somebody to start confusing LaNorris Sellers with Patrick Mahomes.

Can White survive this? Fair question. But it would be awfully convenient to pin the whole afternoon on one coordinator when so many departments contributed to the humiliation.

The offense sputtered. The defense surrendered explosive plays. Florida finished minus-three in turnovers.

A team effort, unfortunately.

In the fourth quarter, I found myself posting:

“This is getting too painful to watch! Where are the Tampa Bay Rays when you need them?”

That’s where we are. Looking elsewhere for a less aggravating way to lose an afternoon.

The Expectations Were Better Than the Football

This was supposed to be the “Rebound Bowl.”

Only one team bounced.

Florida was as flat as yesterday’s Waffle House pancake, and considerably harder to stomach.

A running game we had been admiring has spent two weeks disappearing. Buster Faulkner, recently the subject of head-coaching chatter, suddenly has more pressing employment concerns: finding a play that works.

And Sumrall, whose confidence and winning ways made such a good first impression, is discovering how quickly charm loses its purchasing power in this league.

I’m tired of buying the promise and sitting through the delivery.

Tired of every encouraging Saturday becoming permission to inflate expectations. Tired of finding out the hard way that progress and a pleasant afternoon aren’t necessarily the same thing.

GatorBait follower Perry Mason put it this way:

“What a pathetic showing, no adjustments made at all anytime. Bring on Basketball season — this is to ugly to watch. We aren’t even competitive!”

Basketball? Baseball? Curling? Tiddlywinks?

Anything but another afternoon of this.

Another post delivered an especially sour observation:

“South Carolina cleared out our stadium before ‘won’t back down’ … a 6-6 season incoming… maybe.”

That “maybe” is doing some heavy lifting.

My longtime friend John’s thinking was more in line with mine: “I like our coach. He’s getting a big boy education, but I still think he will be fine.”

Still Here. Not Happy.

I’m not a Jon Sumrall hater.

I, too, still believe he can win here. I’m willing to hang on with him.

But patience ought not require pretending.

This was lousy football. Last week was lousy football. And Gator Nation has endured enough lousy football to recognize it without a coach explaining the film.

Sumrall didn’t try to sell Saturday as anything else.

“Disappointing football today by us. No excuse for it,” he said. “Not many words that are going to make any of it right.”

Correct.

“It starts with me. I’ve got to do a better job of getting this team ready to play to its best.”

Also correct.

He said Florida remained a work in progress even after beating Ole Miss. Winning, he explained, can mask the things a team isn’t doing well.

Then came the sentence worth keeping:

“We haven’t gotten better and improved in certain areas to maybe offset our weaknesses.”

There it is.

Not a bad bounce. Not simply a bad Saturday. A team that hasn’t improved enough to protect itself from what everybody can now see.

I appreciate the honesty. I’d appreciate some improvement considerably more.

So I’m hanging on with Sumrall. But don’t ask me to applaud the ride.

No. 500 deserved better.

So did everybody who showed up.