The Near Brawl: The Optics Don't Tell the Whole Story
Take a moment. Look past the obvious of the halftime melee at midfield when it seemed the Missouri Tigers and Florida Gators were about to engage in the kind of brawl that would have made The Four Horsemen from the NWA days proud.
The visuals are bad. Both teams pushing and shoving. A few attempted punches although it must be noted the players on both teams did have the good sense to keep their helmets on. An all-out brawl seemed inevitable as coaches from both teams tried to get into the middle to separate the warring factions. For a few moments, it seemed not even the coaches were going to be able to stop this from escalating into the kind of ugly incident that would be a black eye on both programs and their coaches not to mention the entire Southeastern Conference. We tend to forget sometimes that this is a violent game played by huge men who spend untold hours in weight rooms. On game days, their emotions are tightly wound and ready to uncoil. One wrong gesture, one wrong word … and in the case of what happened Saturday, Missouri’s Trajan Jeffcoat launched himself and landed a shoulder just under the chin of Florida quarterback Kyle Trask. The hit was a full second after Trask had launched a Hail Mary pass into the end zone on the very last play of the first half and it should have resulted in no worse than a personal foul but no flag was tossed.
Not that a flag would have prevented what happened next.
Trask walked away from the hit, fortunately uninjured, but teammates including those on the sideline rushed to the defense their leader. From the sideline, head ball coach Dan Mullen was seen sprinting onto the field where he potentially put himself in harm’s way. Chaos reigned and could have easily escalated beyond the shouting, the shoving, the pushing and a few flailing fists, none of which did any damage. The potential was there for a brawl like we haven’t seen at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, but the slugfest that could have been was brought under control although not without three players (one from Mizzou, two from Florida) being ejected and the officiating crew issuing a collective unsportsmanlike conduct to both teams, which meant any player who was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct in the second half would have been ejected.
The near brawl is visually obvious, readily viewable by anyone with a computer or a smart phone. There are three things, however, that aren’t quite as the optics would indicate: (1) This team has Kyle Trask’s back; (2) this team knows Dan Mullen has their back; and (3) perhaps most important, this team found a rallying point that led to a dominant second half on both sides of the ball.
Anyone who doubts the impact Kyle Trask has on this team needs only to watch the video replay of the near brawl. Offense, defense, special teams … they all rushed the field. Most of them didn’t get near all the pushing, shoving and acts of bravado, but it was a show of force. If your memory serves you well, you can recall a show of force by Georgia in Jacksonville in 2007 following a touchdown in the first quarter. The entire Georgia bench rushed the field to celebrate. Mark Richt acted like it was an unscripted moment – no one who was there will ever believe that lame excuse – but the effect was to fire up the Georgia crowd and team while demoralizing the Gators. It worked. An inspired Georgia team won the game, 42-30. A week prior to the incident, Georgia fans were in near open rebellion, calling for Richt to be fired.
When Georgia did that October day in 2007 wasn’t lost on Urban Meyer and the Gators. A year later Florida had its own show of force in a 49-10 win over Georgia that was part of the Gators’ run to the 2008 national championship. Meyer spent a year reminding the Gators what happened in the 2007 Georgia game. When the time came to take the field in Jacksonville paybacks were hell. The Gators stomped the Bulldogs on the field and in the final minute, just to remind Georgia that he has a very long memory, Meyer called two time outs. It had taken a year, but Georgia’s show of force moment of 2007 was a bonding moment for the Gators who spent a year waiting for their opportunity to deliver their payback message.
Florida’s show of force against Missouri Saturday night perhaps didn’t demoralize the Tigers but it certainly brought the Gators together in a way we haven’t seen this season. This was a moment when there was a chain reaction of emotions in the minds of every player wearing those beautiful blue throwback jerseys and helmets. The Gators bonded together as one team with one purpose. In games one through three, the Gators seemed to be disjointed and unemotional, almost as if they were running on talent fumes. Talent will get you only so far in college football. Perhaps no other sport relies so heavily on emotion and if there is no emotional switch to deliver a charge of electricity through an entire team you have problems. The Gators found their emotional mojo Saturday night.
That show of support also had the effect of an overload of adrenaline and testosterone rushing through Trask. Watch that first Florida drive of the second half, the one in which Trask does a reasonable Tim Tebow impersonation by taking off for a 26-yard gain and following that up with a 15-yard burst up the middle on fourth and one. The Gators scored on that drive to go up 27-7. The body language on the Missouri sideline told you this game was over and there would be no miracle comeback. On the Florida sideline, the body language was like that of a school of piranhas ready to move in for the kill.
Then there was Mullen. Some might suggest that he did what any coach should do, which is run onto the field and do his best to separate his team, but go back to the 2007 incident. If you watch the replay you’ll see Mark Richt and his staff grinning. The 2007 incident was staged and scripted. What Mullen did was instinctive and it sent a message to his team. That was his quarterback who could have been seriously injured by Jeffcoat’s late hit. That was his team that was ready to go toe-to-toe with Mizzou to let them know you don’t do that to our leader, not in our house.
The Dan Mullen in the middle of that fray had the look of a coach willing to take on anyone and everyone to defend his guys. In describing what happened post game in an interview with Taylor Davis of the SEC Network Mullen said, “That’s their guy” in describing why his team had rushed the field to protect Trask. Don’t think for a second the Gators didn’t also notice how quickly Mullen ran onto the field to put himself in the middle of a chaotic scene that could have spiraled out of control.
When kids know their coach has their back, they’ll take a bullet for him and that’s the message the Gators had for Mullen in the second half. Florida had played well but not great defensively in the first half. Offensively, they showed some rust from the layoff that included a 10-day hiatus from practice. It was a half of peaks and valleys when it seemed to be a two steps forward and one step backward affair.
Then came the second half when we saw was the Florida team we’ve been hoping to see since the season began so awkwardly with the scheduling changes, the limited capacity to normally filled stadiums, daily testing for Covid-19 that led to a host of players going into quarantine, the postponement of the LSU game until December 12 and the reshuffling of the schedule so that Missouri would come to Gainesville October 31. There was a fire in the belly that has been missing. Prior to the second half Saturday, you got the sense that the offense was on its own, the defense was on its own and special teams were doing whatever it is special teams do while they wait their moment to get on the field.
All that changed in the second half when the Gators looked better than they had all season in every aspect of the game. In the second half, they looked like the team that was expected all along. Trask found receivers. He threw for four touchdown passes for a fourth straight game, bringing to 18 his TDPs through the first four games, which is an SEC record. Kadarius Toney made people look silly whether it was catching the football (4-60, 2 TDs) or running it (3-24, 1 TD). Kyle Pitts did what he does, which is either catch passes for nice gains (5-81) or command such attention that others find themselves wide open. We saw proof of life from receivers Trevon Grimes (3-31, 1 TD) and Jacob Copeland (2-67). The offensive line didn’t give up a sack and opened the holes for a running game that netted 169 yards (4.8 per carry), the best total of the season.
Over on the defensive side, Mizzou finished with a misleading 248 yards. Misleading because the Tigers had a 63-yard drive for a field goal and a 75-yard drive for their only offensive touchdown against a unit of mostly freshmen. Lest we forget, the Gators were without 14 players against Missouri including three starters in the secondary, which makes the defensive effort even more remarkable. Missouri averaged only 5.2 yards per pass attempt and 1.7 yards per rush. That’s 206 passing yards and 42 rushing yards allowed. Heading into the game the Gators were giving up 495 yards per game (331 through the air, 164 on the ground).
Brenton Cox Jr. finally had the game we’ve been waiting for. He was a force off the edge with three quarterback hurries, a 15-yard tackle for loss when he stayed home to thwart a reverse and he recovered a fumble. Jeremiah Moon, on the other side of Cox, had his best game of the season. Kyree Campbell, playing his first game of the season, and Tedarrell Slaton were beasts in the middle of the D-line. The secondary had some first half hiccups but in the second half they locked down on the Mizzou receivers until late in the game when it was time to put the kids in to finish things out.
This was Florida’s first complete game of the season and it came at a time when the Gators needed it in the worst way. Being shut down for two weeks due to the virus on the heels of such a disappointing loss to Texas A&M sowed seeds of doubt that quite frankly heightened in the days leading up to Missouri. Those are seeds of doubt that very well might have continued if not for a second half when there was no doubt the Gators had put it all together.
We tend to forget just how much emotions play into football. Take another trip back down memory lane to the 2008 run to the national championship. That couldn’t have happened if not for Tim Tebow’s emotional promise after the loss to Ole Miss. Florida came together as a team, then blew out eight straight opponents. In the SEC Championship Game, the Gators dominated the fourth quarter to hand Alabama its first loss of the season. In the national championship game, once again the Gators dominated in the second half while holding to 14 points an Oklahoma team that had scored 60 or more points five consecutive games.
None of that would have happened without a fusion of emotions and attitudes that began with the Tebow promise.
Sometimes an emotional moment serves the purpose of grabbing a team by the lapels and shaking them. What we saw Saturday night had just that affect. The players had Trask’s back. Mullen had the team’s back. The team went from playing rusty to playing focused and with intent.
Missouri didn’t know what hit them.
The real test of the ugly incident against Missouri will be next Saturday afternoon in Jacksonville when the Gators take on 5th-ranked Georgia. The trick for Mullen and his assistants will be to use the emotional outburst of the Missouri game to their advantage, keeping the Gators high but not too high while maintaining their focus and togetherness. The team we saw in the second half against Missouri is one that is completely capable of taking on Georgia and walking away with a signature win that could propel UF to the SEC East title.
The optics Saturday were not good but look beyond the obvious. What happened at midfield against Missouri at the end of the first half could prove to be a turning point of the season.
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