No. 11 Florida Gators Using Anger Over Alabama Loss To Prepare For Tennessee Volunteers

Elam (5, right) came away from the Alabama game upset. And he's making sure his teammates feel the same. Photo Credit: Chris Spears

Pardon our absence of decorum for lack of a better term, but Kaiir Elam is pissed. The Florida Gators pre-season All-SEC corner had a monster day versus the No. 1 Alabama Crimson Tide, with a game high three pass-breakups. He would've had five if not for two questionable pass-interference calls.

His ability to shut down receivers on the edge is so stifling, he's outperforming a slew of iconic Florida defensive backs—and college defensive backs—who came before him. Elam has allowed a career completion percentage of 42.5%, per Pro Football Focus. Better than CJ Henderson, Vernon Hargreaves, Jalen Ramsey, Jaycee Horn, and others.

But the Gators lost, 31-29. It doesn't matter to Elam that Florida came closer than any team has in years to taking down the mighty Tide (since LSU defeated them in route to a national title in 2019). It doesn't matter to Elam that the Gators defense helped stymy and stop two streaks that had been the nation's best: games of 400 plus yards and 35 points. He doesn't care that the offensive side put up over 400 yards for the 13th straight game or put up a 99-yard drive against a vaulted Nick Saban defense.

Sure, all of those things can be used off which to build...but he doesn't care. Why? Because Florida lost the game. And after a few days of hearing fans and pundits and even Alabama fans alike all prop up the Gators for their noble showing, he'd had enough.

The typically quiet Elam—at least in public—opened up his phone and sent a rare personal tweet.

"Losing NOT acceptable, especially in the Swamp! I have to step it up as a leader," he typed, "but I still love this team over Anybody Every Saturday."

Later that day, Elam met with local media and expounded on his challenge to his teammates.

"I feel like we shouldn't have any sympathy just because we lost by fewer points. Even though we were projected to get mopped or whatever, but I feel like, I'm just telling the guys, like ‘listen, like what we did last week is over with, like, we have to play a lot better.’ I feel like, our next game, our biggest game is our next game, and I feel like Tennessee's coming in here and it's always a big rivalry game against Tennessee and I feel like our main focus should be improving and dominating, honestly.”

Defensive back Rashad Torrence revealed Elam is known for speaking up in the locker room, he just typically stays purposely silent in public. So it should be noted, while Elam isn't the clam that CJ Henderson was, he also isn't the open book we knew with Vernon Hargreaves or Marco Wilson. If he took to Twitter with a challenge that was essentially meant for his teammates, he felt it was an issue and needed to be addressed.

His teammates listened.

“I mean if you’re an athlete or any type of competitor at any level you just don’t like to lose so the outcome of that game wasn’t really satisfying to us," said Torrence. "There’s a lot of positives you can take out of the game, but in total it’s just not something that we woke up [Sunday] morning and said “ok, we’re gong to be ok with the loss”. That’s not ok at all, that’s not acceptable."

Even the fact that the Gators held Bama to a scoreless quarter in the second—and are one of only two teams who have held Bama scoreless in their past 80 quarters of football, and have now done it twice during that span, thanks to a third quarter in the SEC Championship as well—is a building block not a bragging point, as Torrence goes on to say.

"That’s a great stat, but at the end of the day we still lost. So, I feel like that stat is only something we can put in our back pocket and say, ‘OK, we did it once. There’s no reason why we can’t do it for the remainder of the season.”

It was the exact response Mullen asked to see from his players after the loss.

On Saturday night, after the Alabama loss, Mullen commented, "I like the effort this team has. I think it’s going to be really interesting to see our response in practice this week, I really do. Because I never doubted the effort that our team was going to give or the attitude our guys had. Our guys expected to win the game today coming into it. I know they’re disappointed.

"You play in championship level game the margin for error is going to get extremely small. I hope our guys and coaches, everybody we have to point those out and embrace that at practice this week. We have to come together as a team that way and that positive energy of eliminating every little error at practice within our preparation and have it show out in our performance next week against Tennessee.”

This week, after Elam's tweet and response, Mullen saw the beginnings of what he wanted his leaders to do to keep this team focused.

"When you get in these situations and you want all the guys sitting there and are we looking and saying, ‘Hey, our attention to detail, the exactness that we have, are we making sure we’re holding each other accountable?’ but doing that in a positive, lifting guys up manner to get the results that we need and the improvement we need in our production and performance on Saturdays."

According to Torrence, the team has answered their coach's call.

"The foot’s been on the gas ever since we stepped out on the field today. We knew that we had to keep that intensity up because this week is no easy week. It’s just like any other week, so we knew we had to come out and play with that same intensity and that same fire that we brought on Saturday.”

Torrence (16) says intensity has been up since the Bama loss. Photo Credit: Chris Spears

Tennessee, while 2-1 and having won their last game 56-0, aren't exactly the world beaters they once were. They haven't been for a while, especially when it comes to the Gators, who have beaten their rival 15 of the last 16 games. But under new head coach Josh Heupel, the Vols have taken their offense up tempo...and they're hungry for a win over UF...and they are banking on the Gators coming out flat with the notorious Bama hangover.

Kaiir Elam will be ready.

"They go fast and they like to throw the ball deep a lot, so I feel like I mentally need to be prepared on that, and just, like I said, making sure we open-field tackle. I feel like that’s another thing we can improve on from last weekend, just executing Coach Grantham’s play call, but I feel like we should be, I expect to dominate that game.”

He'll be ready because, frankly—and again, for lack of a better term—Alabama pissed him off, personally. One of the reasons Elam's numbers were so good in that game is because the Tide kept throwing at him. While a corner relishes a chance to make a play and ruin a pass, it's considered a sign of disrespect as well, to keep throwing at him. Elam, as mentioned above, has allowed a failing passer rating in his career. Quarterbacks should want to avoid him. Bryce Young didn't. And Elam's holding on to that.

"I get angry every time they try to throw at me, so I was pretty mad...I was definitely happy I got a lot of action, but I just feel like it's disrespectful every time a team throws at me though.”

Now Kaiir Elam—an unquestioned leader of this defense and the Florida Gators as a whole–will take it out on the Vols, and he'll make sure his teammates do as well.

"I just really wanted to make a statement to not only Gator Nation, but my team that a loss is unacceptable. I feel like I just didn't feel good about us just being proud of that, I just felt like we just need to focus on winning. I just, that's all I want to do, I just want to win and help my team win, so whatever we have to do to do that. That’s all I want to do.”