Gators get a win on the "Near Whiff at Ben Hill Griff"

Forget the aesthetics for just a moment. After a season filled where disappointment seemed to lurk around every corner, four losses that could have gone the other way if someone had made a play or two, two assistant coaches being fired and head coach Dan Mullen getting his pink slip on Sunday ahead of the Florida State game, the Florida Gators were one loss away from GPS coordinates on the exact location of rock bottom.

This was a team that desperately needed a win and the Gators couldn’t be choosy. Any kind of win would do just fine, even the double ugly variety.

If pretty was what you were looking for Saturday, then you would have been better off watching Chip and Joanna Gaines do a fixer-upper on HGTV rather than spending four hours of your life that you can never get back. It took FSU kicker Parker Grothaus to graze an onside kick attempt with 49 seconds to end the suspense of this mistake-a-thon. Grothhaus never intended to catch his cleat in the ball. He wasn’t supposed to kick the ball but give it a good fake while the other kicker charged in with a dribbler the other way. The Gators might have been bamboozled except Grothaus caught the ball with his cleat and the ball fell off the tee, about nine yards and two feet shy of the required 10 it had to travel for the Seminoles to legally recover.

That was it. Game over. Florida 24, Florida State 21.

It was ugly, for sure, but a win counts the same whether it’s dog’s butt ugly or the football equivalent of a masterpiece hanging in The Louvre.

“A great win in a rivalry game,” is how UF interim coach Greg Knox described it. “What a big, big showing today. Was it our best? No, but it was a win and it was a great win.”

Under normal circumstances, nobody would dare call this a great win, but the week leading up to this game was anything but normal. Nor was the game played on the field Saturday. How can you call a game normal in which the two teams combine for six interceptions, six fumbles, 22 penalties and what seemed like 22 delays while the ACC zebra crew went to instant replay?

Florida’s share of the abnormality included three first half interceptions thrown by Emory Jones, a pair of near turnovers on fumbles that the Gators were fortunate to recover and 13 penalties for 107 yards including four on FSU’s final 16-play, 92-yard scoring drive. The Gators were inconsistent, undisciplined and downright fortunate but they won and that’s all that mattered. Instead of going down in flames for the fifth time since mid-October and instead of losing a one-score game for the fifth time this season, the Gators pulled their season even at 6-6, which means they will have a chance to finish with a winning record if they can win their bowl game. Florida State also threw three interceptions, fumbled four times (lost one), committed nine penalties for 89 yards and had two special teams gaffes that pulled the plug on whatever hopes the Seminoles (5-7) had of avoiding a fourth consecutive losing season.

This won’t be a New Year’s Six bowl like the ones the Gators played in the three previous years (Peach in 2018, Orange in 2019 and Cotton in 2020). The bowl destination will be a bit less exotic – Birmingham is a possibility against a team from the MAC but Tampa for a matchup with UCF for the Gasparilla Bowl seems more likely – but where the Gators go will be someone else’s decision. Saturday, the Gators decided they wanted to go to a bowl game and that meant beating Florida State.

“Who knows where it’s gonna be or when, but I can tell you this: they are excited about that,” Knox said. “They were excited about winning this game, a rivalry game, and they knew that it meant going to a bowl game. That senior class wanted it.”

The senior class had to want it. The Gators had to want it. Otherwise they couldn’t have overcome all those mistakes. There were way too many of them, pretty much a trademark of a season gone bad. In most games this season the mistakes were the calling card of the inconsistent Gators, but against FSU the Gators managed to overcome their own self-inflicted wounds. It could have been a whole lot different if the Gators hadn’t left points on the board in the first half. The Gators should have gone into the locker room at least 10 points ahead but it was 7-7.

It was almost fitting. How could we have a Florida football game in which the Gators didn’t empty a couple of clips into their feet?

Here is what the Gators had to overcome in the first half. Three consecutive drives ended with Jones completing a pass to the Seminoles. Leading 7-0, Rashad Torrence picked off a McKenzie Milton pass at the FSU 44 only to have the Gators give it back on the very next play. This wasn’t Jones’ fault but a mistake by an offensive lineman who whiffed his block on a flea flicker. When Jones tried to throw, he was hit, causing the ball to sail wide over an open Xzavier Henderson and into the arms of a Seminole defender.

On Florida’s next possession, Jones held the ball too long and then stared down Jacob Copeland before throwing into double coverage at the FSU 32. Had he looked across the middle a couple of seconds earlier, Trent Whittemore was wide open and an interception could have been avoided.

The third and most costly of the three picks came at the end of a methodical drive that began on the UF 25 and proceeded 15 plays to the FSU nine where it was first-and-goal. Jones never saw Malik Davis in the clear in the left flat. An easy pass probably would have scored a TD. Instead he threw threw into traffic in the middle of the end zone where he was intercepted.

When Jones threw short and into the back of an FSU defender (Jacob Copeland had him beaten) on Florida’s first possession of the third quarter, Knox made the switch to Anthony Richardson. The quarterback switch didn’t bring Florida’s mistakes to an end, but at least it did energize the Gators who were able to put enough points on the scoreboard to win the game. Richardson drove the Gators to a field goal, threw a touchdown pass to Justin Shorter and then led them on the 10-play, 68-yard drive that produced the game-winning touchdown with 12:36 left in the game.

The last touchdown drive was the one in which the play calls from the bench were designed for Dameon Pierce and the senior running back from Bainbridge, Georgia, playing in his final game in The Swamp, came through when the Gators needed him the most. Pierce finished the game with 62 yards but 49 of them came on this drive in which he had to score the touchdown twice.

Pierce got the first four carries on the drive, slashing through the FSU defensive front for 38 yards and three first downs. It was his fifth carry that fans will remember.

On a first-and-10 at the FSU 13, Pierce looked like he was shot out of a gun until he ran into a pack of Seminoles at the five. Somewhere in the pack, Pierce’s helmet came off, which under the rules means the play is dead. Pierce just ripped through the defenders and kept on powering into the end zone. Flags flew and the TD was waved off with Pierce charged with a personal foul for continuing to play once he was helmet-less.

Thanks, in part, to an unnecessary roughness call on the Seminoles Florida got 10 of the 15 yards back on the next play. Two plays later, Pierce bolted in from three yards out.

“Man, I don’t know how it [the helmet] came off,” Pierce recalled after the game. “I just knew I was three yards from the touchdown so I got there. I don’t know why it’s a flag. I don’t know why you want me to stop running if I’m in motion, I see the goal line and I see the end zone. I’ll do that 50 outta 50 if it ever happens again.”

The Seminoles scored two touchdowns in the game’s final 9:46 to make a game of it but they got plenty of help from the Gators. The defense was pretty much a no-show for the only time the entire game on the first drive that cut the lead to 24-14.

The defense forced the Seminoles to dink and dunk their way for 16 plays when they narrowed the margin to 24-21, but the Gators aided and abetted with two offsides calls, a pass interference and an unsportsmanlike conduct. The bad news is the Seminoles got a TD. The good news is they ate up most of the clock moving the ball down the field.

And then came “The Near-Whiff at Ben Hill Griff” that saved the day, giving the Gators a win in a close game for a change. This was Florida’s fifth one-possession game of the season, but the first one the Gators claimed the win. Prior to beating FSU by a field goal, UF had lost seven straight one-possession games, one of the chief reasons why former head coach Dan Mullen lost his job a week ago.

Perhaps it was simply a case of about time. About time the Gators won a close one instead of losing the white knucklers. About time the other team made more mistakes at critical times instead of the Gators.

Whatever it was, it was a win that set off a locker room vibe that Pierce said has been missing for the previous couple of months.

“The vibe was back in the locker room,” Pierce said. I feel that vibe and I feel very confident that way now. I probably couldn’t say that three or four weeks ago, to be honest, but the only thing that matter is that we were who we are as a team and as a program, and, you know, hopefully we just going to carry that over to the bowl game.”

The bowl game. Those that see a trip to Birmingham or Tampa to lesser-known bowl games against teams from directional schools or non-power leagues as beneath a school of Florida’s pedigree should think again. The bowl game allows 15 more practices. The bowl game allows whoever is the new coach to evaluate underclassmen who could be on the UF roster next year if they don’t hit the transfer portal. For the underclassmen, bowl game practices could prove to be their auditions for 2022.

As important as anything, the bowl game gives the Gators a chance to finish with a winning record and a modest two-game winning streak. That may not sound like much, but when you’ve endured the hills, valleys, pain and agony of 2021 like this team, you need all the positive momentum you can grab.

Knox, who is now 2-0 as an interim head coach (he won Mississippi State’s bowl game in 2017), wasn’t about to let go of the moment. Getting the win was important to him. He’s not likely to be retained by the new coach and his family is about to be uprooted. Winning against FSU and going to a bowl game can only help him land on his feet.

He didn’t sound at all concerned about his future, however. He gave all the praise to the kids, particularly the seniors who could have mailed it in but instead chose to stand and fight it out. He said he knew when the Gators walked out of their hotel Saturday morning that they would give him everything they had.

“I think it was the fact that we had a great senior class with some leadership,” Knox said. “They understood the situation they were in and we talked about opportunity in chaos. In a chaotic situation that started Sunday with Dan getting dismissed and me being put in place and then all the things coming from the outside that I think they pulled together and made them stronger. It made me stronger because I pulled with them and we held this thing together. And today, all right, when we watched our highlight video we came out of that meeting at that hotel I knew when we walked out of that room they were ready to play and they were.”

In the locker room after the game there was plenty of celebration and Knox got a Gatorade bath, but he made it a point to emphasize exactly what had happened on the field.

“This was a message for life,” Knox said. “This was a life message that when things don’t go your way, you just keep pushing. You persevere and push through. That was the message Friday night – opportunity in the midst of chaos. A chaos situation but there’s an opportunity in it. We had an opportunity today to come out, correct the mistakes and get a win and we did that.”

There was plenty of chaos Saturday. Given what has transpired this season it seems rather impossible to think the Gators could make it through an entire ball game without adversity and chaos. This time, unlike those previous disappointments, the Gators made one more play and finished on the plus side of the scoreboard.

From an aesthetical point of view, the game stunk, but for a team that needed something, anything, to lift them up, getting a double ugly win was ever so beautiful. The Gators beat FSU and the seniors went out winners their final game in The Swamp.

In so many ways, it doesn’t get much better than that.