Jon Sumrall: No Bad Wins, Work the Cut After Florida Beats Auburn
By GatorBait Staff
AUBURN, Ala. — Jon Sumrall walked into his first SEC road game as Florida's head coach and walked out of Jordan-Hare Stadium with a 44-39 win, a 3-0 record and a list of corrections long enough to keep the celebration short.
Florida piled up 495 yards of offense and rushed for 243, but the number Sumrall kept coming back to was 16 — the Gators' penalty total. Florida was flagged for 138 yards, and Sumrall made clear that winning did not erase it.
The penalties were out of control. I mean, 16 penalties. We won't win another game all year if we do that again. Not one more game.
Sumrall called the mistakes “inexcusable” and said the responsibility starts with the coaching staff. The message was consistent throughout the press conference: Florida showed toughness and response, but it did not yet show the discipline required to survive the best teams on the SEC schedule.
We better. I'm not confident yet because we haven't done it.
Florida's offense answered every challenge
Jadan Baugh carried 26 times for 162 yards and three touchdowns. Aaron Philo completed 15 of 22 passes for 204 yards and a touchdown in his first SEC road start. Dallas Wilson caught the third-quarter touchdown that pushed Florida ahead 34-17, while Duke Clark scored on a 20-yard run in the first half.
Sumrall said he never doubted Florida's offensive matchup with Auburn.
I knew we were going to run the ball on them. I knew we were going to throw the ball on them.
He also praised Philo's response after an early interception, describing the quarterback as a player with a “cowboy mentality” who is “tough as nails.” Sumrall said Florida's team believes in Philo because of the way he is wired and the way he handles adversity.
When something bad happens, we say good. And when something good happens, we say good.
Work the cut
The phrase that defined the week — and eventually Florida's night — came from combat sports. Sumrall said UFC star Justin Gaethje spoke to the team in training camp, and the staff used the idea of repeatedly attacking a weakness rather than waiting for one knockout blow.
This week, the conversation was really three words: work the cut.
Sumrall said he repeated the phrase over the headset throughout the game. Florida did not land every punch, and Auburn answered several times, but the Gators kept responding.
Eventually, if we keep working the cut, we'll find ourselves victorious... We were the last man standing.
A win with personal meaning
For Sumrall, winning on Pat Dye Field carried extra weight. He grew up in Alabama studying the state's great coaches and said he keeps a photograph of Pat Dye and Bear Bryant hunting rabbits in Moundville, Alabama, in his office.
For our first SEC win as a program with me as a head coach to do it on Pat Dye Field, I can't tell you what that means to me personally.
The warning after the win
Florida's defense produced seven sacks and two takeaways, including an interception by Cormani McClain, but Auburn still scored 39 points. Sumrall praised his team's resilience while repeatedly returning to missed assignments, poor leverage and unnecessary explosive plays.
His assessment of where Florida stands was intentionally uncomfortable.
If we play like that, we will get just slaughtered. It wouldn't be close.
The Gators are 3-0 and 1-0 in the SEC. The next step is not proving they can win. Sumrall's message is that they have to prove they can play cleaner.
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GatorBait’s postgame video excerpts are included above. The complete press-conference transcript follows.
Full Jon Sumrall postgame transcript
Transcript lightly edited for punctuation, spelling of proper names and readability. Questions are identified as Reporter.
Jon Sumrall: All right. No bad wins. Always good to win. We still have a lot to improve upon. That's not our best football. We're going to get there. We got so much to work on to improve. The penalties were out of control. I mean, 16 penalties. We won't win another game all year if we do that again. Not one more game. And so, I got to get it cleaned up as a staff. We got to get cleaned up. We got to play with more discipline. I didn't agree with all of them, but still, I'm not going to let our guys off the hook. That's inexcusable.
Jon Sumrall: But man, you know, I grew up in this state. As a kid, there was a couple people I always watched, and one of them's name was on this field, Pat Dye. I've got a ton of respect for Pat Dye, God rest his soul. And then the other two across the state, Gene Stallings and Bear Bryant. I watched those guys my whole life. Bear Bryant died basically when I was born, but I idolized the great coaches coaching in this state.
Jon Sumrall: And for our first SEC win as a program with me as a head coach to do it on Pat Dye Field, I can't tell you what that means to me personally because I've got a picture of Pat Dye and Bear Bryant in my office in Moundville, Alabama, hunting rabbits. To do it on Pat Dye Field means something to me. But this is about our guys. I'm so proud of them. They found a way. A lot of people doubted them. Heard a lot of people all week second guessing why we were favorite in this game. It didn't have to be as close as it was. They're well coached. They're a good football team. Wish them nothing but the best, and excited to get back on this plane and get back home and get to work tomorrow.
Reporter: Jadan had the early bobble that led to the interception, then redeemed himself throughout the game. How about his response and the ability to run against that defense?
Jon Sumrall: It was a concern for who? For you guys? I knew we were going to do what we did on offense tonight. I'd watched them enough to know how we were going to play on offense. The interception, we gave them a gift. Didn't need to give that to them, but I had no doubt how we were going to play on offense. The people that were concerned about how we were going to play on offense, I've probably been more concerned about our defense holding up, to be honest with you. But offensively, I knew we were going to run the ball on them. I knew we were going to throw the ball on them. They're good up there, but I felt like we were better. I felt like the matchup leaned our way.
Jon Sumrall: But Jadan Baugh did a great job responding. That's a really unfortunate play. Should have caught the ball. Bad play. I grabbed him and said, “Hey, around here when something bad happens, we say good. And when something good happens, we say good.” I went over to him after the play and said, “Good. Got a chance to redeem yourself now. Go make another play next time.” I didn't like it, but that's our mindset. When something bad happens, we say good.
Reporter: Talk about the poise you guys played with throughout the game because Auburn made some runs.
Jon Sumrall: I don't know if we played with poise. I thought we responded. If we played with better poise, we wouldn't have had the dumb penalties we had. I do think we showed we have some mental toughness and were resilient, but I don't think we played with poise all the time. I think our responses were good. Anytime they countered, we had a couple jabs left. We kept responding all night. So, I don't know if we played with the poise I need to see us play with to really feel like we're where we need to go, but I do think our response was really good.
Reporter: What about Aaron Philo in his first road start in this environment?
Jon Sumrall: Thought he handled it really well. He's got a little bit of a cowboy mentality, man. He's tough as nails. He don't talk a whole lot just to talk. He ain't that type of dude, but he ain't going to back down enough. I can tell watching him, just how he carries himself. I got a lot of confidence in him. Our team has a lot of confidence in him, just because that's the way he's wired. He's a tough, blue-collar, chip-on-your-shoulder type guy.
Reporter: What about Emanuel's performance considering his status coming in?
Jon Sumrall: He was a true game-time decision. Him and E were both. I think we'll have a real good shot at getting E back next week. Emanuel really only ran around a lot on Friday and never really fully practiced all week and was very questionable going into the game. So proud of him showing up and playing with the toughness he did.
Reporter: How critical were those back-to-back sacks?
Jon Sumrall: Huge. Huge, huge. That's where I talk about we made responses. I don't know that we played really clean, but we responded in some big moments where you had to go make a play.
Reporter: How do you think the defense did keeping Byrum Brown in the pocket and limiting the unscripted plays?
Jon Sumrall: I thought for the most part we did a good job. A little bit leaky at times. The thing I was not pleased with was we felt like, with him, the type of passer he was, we needed to stay on the top shoulder of the route all night and try to force him to make intermediate or short-game throws. We did not do that at times. The run game, really the couple he got, we just didn't stay in our rush lanes. But for the most part, you felt us push the pocket, get frontal on him and not allow him to be real comfortable.
Reporter: With the penalties, what's your confidence level that you'll be able to clean those up?
Jon Sumrall: We better. I'm not confident yet because we haven't done it. We played really good football week one penalty-wise. We had four in week one. Then we had eight last week. We had 16. I'm not a mathematician, but four to eight's doubling them, and eight to 16 is doubling them again. If we don't get that fixed and get back to how we were in week one, we are about to get absolutely embarrassed when we play high-end SEC teams.
Reporter: What were you telling the team about finishing when you were up 17?
Jon Sumrall: This week, the conversation was really three words: work the cut. I don't know how familiar you are with boxing or UFC, but Justin Gaethje came and talked to our team back there in training camp. I showed them pictures of Gaethje's fight in D.C. on the White House lawn this year. Everybody thinks you knock the other guy out by just a big hit, and that's not how it happens in fighting or anything in a game. You have to cut the eye and then you keep cutting the eye with the jab and then at some point you wait for the uppercut, but you don't start with uppercuts. You wear the guy down.
Jon Sumrall: And I think that was really on the headset all night. When something good would happen or bad would happen, I'd go to the all-call button and say, “Hey, everybody tell the guys, work the cut. Work the cut. Work the cut. Work the cut.” Eventually, if we keep working the cut, we'll find ourselves victorious. They got a couple punches in on us too. They bladed our eye a couple times too, but we were the last man standing.
Reporter: That photo of Bear Bryant and Pat Dye — are they hunting rabbits together?
Jon Sumrall: They were hunting rabbits. They're in Moundville, Alabama, in a hunting camp getting ready to go hunt rabbits. They were eating rabbit soup or rabbit stew. I got the picture in my office. I grew up in the state. I love football. I love the football that's been played in the state forever, at both schools, at all schools, at Troy. I love Troy football, man. I've idolized Pat Dye, Bear Bryant, Gene Stallings my whole life. They were hunting in Moundville, Alabama. Most of y'all don't even know — even you Alabama people in here don't even know where Moundville, Alabama, is — but I do because I'm from the state. It's a picture I cherish because I love great football coaches and I have a lot of respect for both of those guys.
Reporter: Before the game, did you like the demeanor and confidence you saw from your team?
Jon Sumrall: I knew our guys were ready to play. I might have used some motivation from outside people that said we weren't really as good, we hadn't played anybody. That's what I heard a lot from some people out in the media. We hadn't played anybody. I think FAU is pretty good. I think Campbell's a decent football team, but they talked about how they had played people. Well, they played us tonight, and so we were going to be ready to play the game the way we need to play it.
Jon Sumrall: It still wasn't good enough to go win the big ones we've got coming. We were able to win this one. We turn the page tomorrow to the next one. If we play like that, we will get just slaughtered. It wouldn't be close. So we've got a lot to work on. But I think our guys were mentally prepared to come on the road, take the challenge, hostile environment, great crowd, backs against the wall a little bit, a lot of people against us, and play with the demeanor of what being a good, tough football team looks like.
Reporter: How do you evaluate the defense when you get seven sacks and two takeaways but give up 39 points?
Jon Sumrall: It goes back to if we would just do our job and stay in tackle coverage. I'm not going to throw this table. I was going to throw the podium or something. We did not at times do simple things that we were going to do, like stay on the top shoulder. We just dive to the low hip, and I'm like, well, that's not what we've talked about. Just do your job. Until we are so on point with everybody doing their job all the time, we're going to give up stupid explosive plays like we did tonight that were not necessary. Credit to them, they made some plays, but there's a couple of them out there that we just decided to give them a gift, and that's not what good football teams do.
Reporter: Any special feeling considering the Auburn job discussion?
Jon Sumrall: Who said I interviewed for this job? What are you talking about? They didn't want me. I didn't want them.
Reporter: How critical were the halftime adjustments and the fast start to the second half?
Jon Sumrall: We felt good coming into the half about some things we could do to attack them off of some things we had seen. It's huge to set the tone early. I do think that was really the game-deciding swing back and forth, how we came out of the locker room at the start of the second half. I felt like we were a little bit more dialed in maybe than we had been the whole game, to be quite honest, on both sides for a minute there. I thought it was a huge sequence for sure.
Reporter: How did that opening drive of the second half set the momentum for the offense?
Jon Sumrall: I just thought our guys played with confidence. If we don't get the holding penalties late in the game there, like I said, I think we stopped ourselves. But it was nice to see us respond coming out of halftime. Sometimes you worry about at the start of the second half a lull or maybe a lethargic vibe, and our guys didn't have that at all offensively. We were really good defensively to start the half.
Jon Sumrall: I do want to say one more thing. Kayla Beckley, John Beckley's wife — John Beckley worked for me at Troy. He was a GA for me. He's now coaching at Tulsa. His wife passed young, like 30, really young recently. While I'm celebrating a win tonight, there are people that do this that have real lives and family. John Beckley, a dear friend of mine, somebody I look at really closely because he worked for me when I was head coach at Troy, lost his wife recently and way too young. I just want to acknowledge a lot of the guys that coached with him wore yellow ribbons tonight. I didn't make a big deal out of it, but we're thinking of them during this tough time.
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