The Gators aren't going to sneak up on anyone anymore

Florida's defense swarmed all night long, allowing only one sustained Kentucky drive (Gator Bait Photo by Chris Spears)

It seemed like old times at The Swamp Saturday night. Kentucky was in town expecting to win its fourth straight game over the Gators, but instead they retreated to Lexington on the short end of a 48-20 score. Just like it used to be. The game was all too reminiscent of the 1984 Gators, who were honored and welcomed with a roar of approval by the homecoming crowd of 89,906.

The formula that Billy Napier used to bushwhack Kentucky was a throwback to the one Charley Pell and Galen Hall put in place in 1984. Billy had the Gators pound Kentucky up the gut in the running game with freshman Jadan Baugh grinding out 106 punishing yards and scoring five touchdowns. When Kentucky’s safeties tried to play tourniquet to help stop the bleeding by creeping closer to the line of scrimmage, freshman quarterback DJ Lagway went over the top, throwing for 259 yards on only seven completions. Five of the completions – one for 40 yards to Tre Wilson, two for 63 to Chimere Dike, three for 148 to Elijhah Badger – were laser-guided smart bombs.

Florida’s offense couldn’t have done what it did if the defense hadn’t shown up in a big way, picking off three Kentucky passes and stuffing the Wildcats four times on fourth down. With the exception of a flea flicker for a 45-yard TD pass that caught the Gators flat footed and a 12-play, 75-yard touchdown drive to start the third quarter, Florida’s defense had the Wildcats’ number.

Back in 1984 when the Gators won their last eight games to become the first Florida team to ever go undefeated in the Southeastern Conference, it was run Lorenzo Hampton, John L. Williams and Neal Anderson behind the Great Wall led by Lomas Brown. When the safeties crept in to stop the run, redshirt freshman QB Kerwin Bell went over the top to receivers like Ricky Nattiel. Remember the 94-yard Bell to Nattiel bomb against Georgia? When the offense did its thing, a defense led by Tim Newton, Alonzo Johnson and Jarvis Williams punished opponents.

Call what the Gators did a blowout, call it a beatdown, call it anything you want to call it, but the way they manhandled Kentucky sure looked a lot like that 1984 team. In 1984 the Gators started 1-1-1. When Charley Pell fell on the sword for 109 NCAA violations, Galen Hall took over and the Gators grew into the best team in the country.

In dismantling a Kentucky team that came to Gainesville with the fourth best defense in the country, the Gators looked very much like a team that has turned the corner. Don’t let Kentucky’s record – 3-4, 1-4 SEC – fool you. Florida beat a quality SEC team that should have beaten Georgia (held Georgia to 13 points and 262 yards). In six previous games prior to UF, the only team that gained more than 288 yards on the Kentucky defense was Ole Miss, which was held to 353 yards and 17 points.

Here is what the Gators did. On offense, Florida ran for 197 yards, threw for 279. In 13 possessions, the Gators scored five touchdowns and two field goals. Defensively, the Gators held Kentucky to 309 yards and two offensive touchdowns. The Wildcats threw three interceptions, one by Devin Moore that was run back 52 yards to set up a TD, another a pick six by Cormani McClain. There was a goal line stand in which Desmond Watson split a double team on third-and-2 at the UF three, then helped clog things up on fourth down when Kentucky couldn’t go over the top because the UF D-line got their pads under the UK linemen and stood them up.

This was the best coached game of Billy Napier’s tenure at the University of Florida. The offense and defense were in synch. There was a glitch in the kicking game that allowed Kentucky’s Barion Brown to run a kickoff back 99 yards for a touchdown, but otherwise the Gators were good. Jeremy Crawshaw’s four punts averaged 50.8 yards. Tre Smack kicked two field goals and six extra points.

This was a far cry from the team that was slapped silly by both Miami and Texas A&M. One week past an overtime loss to Tennessee, it was a team that showed its capabilities even with 15 players out including Graham Mertz and Montrell Johnson Jr.

“I would tell you this group they felt like they had maybe let the place down, let people down in terms of how we played earlier in the year,” Napier said. “They took that personal and it was important to them to do that better.”

They did better. They were much, much better. This was the Florida team we were expecting when the season began. Maybe what happened with those early losses to Miami and the Aggies was a matter of a team still growing up.

Whatever it was, what we saw against Kentucky was a team with so many young kids starting to play like they actually know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. They were in synch in all three phases of the game, four if you count the coaching because there were no avoidable blunders or moments of indecision.

“We played complementary ball,” Napier said. “Again, I think we probably played our best football of the year, and I'm really proud of the resiliency of that group.”

Now comes the gauntlet after this week’s open date – Georgia in Jacksonville, Texas in Austin, LSU and Ole Miss at home. Can the kids continue to grow up? Can they somehow come away with a win or two before the season finale with Florida State in Tallahassee?

The signs all point to a team that could best be described as dangerous. Everybody in the SEC knows what a tough out Kentucky is. Everybody in the SEC has seen how the Gators put the kibosh on the Wildcats. Think of it as a shot across the bow of the five teams remaining on the schedule. The Gators aren’t going to sneak up on anyone. No team with superstars in the making like DJ Lagway and Jadan Baugh will sneak up on anyone. They will have the undivided attention of any team they play from here on out.

Lagway will be the focal point of every defensive coordinator on the UF schedule because he simply flicks his wrist and cuts loose with the best deep ball a Gator QB has thrown since the days of Rex Grossman. Against Kentucky he showed off his legs by avoiding the rush to buy time to throw and by taking off 10 times for 46 yards. He has receivers who can get separation. Against UK he completed a 40-yarder to Tre Wilson, two for 63 yards to Chimere Dike, and three for 148 yards to Elijhah Badger.

Baugh showed the toughness and strength to run between the tackles, the jump cut to find open space once through the hole and the ability to hit an extra gear to separate from defenders. He was good for five touchdowns.

The O-line did its part, evidenced by the Gators averaging 4.5 yards per carry and an astonishing 18.6 yards per pass attempt.

The defense bent a few times but it never broke. In Florida’s last three games, the defense that couldn’t get stops against Miami, the Aggies and Mississippi State has allowed only two sustained drives.

We’ve seen a team that is suddenly figuring things out and showing game-to-game improvement. We’ve seen a team that has shown it can handle the kind of injuries that would devastate a lot of teams, yet through injuries to guys like Graham Mertz and Montrell Johnson Jr. young guys have stepped in and stepped up.

Is it enough? Can the Gators continue to expand their maturity and resilience to get through these next four games with unexpected wins and perhaps become bowl eligible with a win in Tallahassee?

The 1984 Gators faced the adversity of losing their head coach three games into the season, but Galen Hall did the next man up thing and the Gators kept gaining momentum with each game they played. By season’s end they were the best team in the country.

The 2024 Gators have faced their share of adversity as well. Napier says “We were embarrassed” by the early results but here they are with an open date ahead of Georgia, Texas, LSU and Ole Miss. No one is going to say the Gators are about to go on a 4-game roll that will astonish the college football world, but they could be the team nobody on the remaining schedule wants to play.