Sounds Following Florida-Georgia: The Gators’ Resolve Shone Through

“That's just us. That’s nothing new for us. We’ve been in plenty of games like that before this year and we’ve always fought through it,” Richardson said.

By: KYLE CURTIS

GatorBaitMedia.com

JACKSONVILLE -- Anthony Richardson looked to have tweaked something in his lower body on the first possession of the game. Nonetheless, that didn’t stop Richardson from going out and passing for 200-plus yards for the third time in his career.

While the Gators lost the game, they fought all four quarters.

Richardson led the third-quarter surge connecting with Xzavier Henderson on a 78-yard touchdown reception.

“That’s just looking at the coverage,” Richardson said. “The call we had there was basically like a quick out to Ricky [Pearsall] and I was looking to throw that, but I saw the corner squat, and I just knew the holeshot was going to be there eventually, so I waited and saw Xzavier there, and he just ran.”

Thanks to Henderson’s catch and run the Gators went on to score 17 unanswered points in the third quarter to get back within one score.

“That's just us. That’s nothing new for us. We’ve been in plenty of games like that before this year and we’ve always fought through it,” Richardson said. “So, that’s just is. That’s just how we play ball. We try not to put ourselves in a hole like that early, but that’s how we play ball. We like to fight and just play aggressively.”

Photo Credit - Chris Spears

The comeback came up short when Georgia began finding success in the ground game. Following Stetson Bennett’s second interception of the day to Florida’s Amari Burney, Georgia stuck with the run game.

“We got it to one score and they rushed the ball very effectively in that possession and ended up scoring a touchdown to get it back to two scores. We will watch the film and we will see a lot of areas that we can do better,” Napier said.

“We can coach better, and we can play better. But yes, they got the momentum back when they scored. I think in that drive they rushed the ball primarily after the quarterback had thrown a handful of interceptions.”

While the defense has been the focal point of the losses this year, there were both highs and lows from Saturday's performance. The Gator defense forced three takeaways but also allowed 500-plus yards.

“You got to kind of take it for what it is. You’ve got to look at it, you got to kind of accept and you got to understand that what happened was a product of how we played at times," said Tyreak Sapp, a redshirt freshman defensive lineman. "And then the good things that we made happen were things that we had to make happen… The better we play together as a team, as a defense, the better outcomes we had.”

Kirby Smart and Georgia have assembled one of the best rosters in the nation in terms of recruiting over the past few years, freshly coming off of a national championship. Still, Billy Napier is not using the excuse of a talent gap for the reason his team came on the losing end Saturday.

“It doesn’t matter if there’s a talent gap or not,” Napier said. “It matters who executed the best today. We didn’t execute the best today.”