The No. 6 Florida Gators Defeat Kentucky Wildcats, But Team Is Far From Peaking...and That's Good
- Buddy Martin
- Nov 28, 2020
- 9 min read
Updated: Nov 29, 2020
It was one of those weird late November Florida days; the kind that oscillates between hot and cold, intense sunshine interspersed with spotty deluged.
On the field, the No. 6 Florida Gators (7-1) mimicked the moody Florida sky.
To begin, in the first half when nothing else worked, special teams did.
In a half when the defense couldn’t get off the field and the offense couldn’t stay on the field, special teams picked up the rope.
The oft most overlooked part of the game saved the No. 6 Florida Gators (7-1) as they defeated the Kentucky Wildcats (3-6) early Saturday afternoon in Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, providing a buffer at halftime from which the Gators launched themselves to a 34-10 win.
“Overall I thought it was a really good special teams day,” demurs Head Coach Dan Mullen.
“One of the things we talked with those guys: 'Be ready for that moment and execute.' So you practice the fake punts, you practice them, you practice them. You get into a situation where we want to call it and then you've got to execute. I thought our guys came out, executed that very well. You practice the pooch punts all the time, we practice that a bunch. We come out there, we execute it extremely well. You go through the punt return scheme, we executed that well. I thought our kickoff coverage, kicking them deep, our kicking game was really good all day. There was one knock: We missed the field goal. We get used to Evan being automatic but he missed a field goal today.”
Even with McPherson’s missed field goal (and he should’ve been awarded it, considering officials robbed him of a field goal against Kentucky in 2018) special teams won the first half.
The first three drives (two on defense and one on offense) looked primed to set up Florida’s best all-around game of the season.
The defense, as per usual, gave up two plays of 10 or more yards through the first four snaps. Then Mohamoud Diabate (six tackles, 0.5 sack, one interception, two quarterback hurries) met Cats running back Kavosiey Smoke for no gain. Kentucky picked up another chunk yardage on fourth down, then Brenton Cox (three tackles, 1.5 for loss, one sack, two quarterback hurries) dropped UK quarterback Terry Wilson (10-18, 62 yards, one touchdown, two interceptions) for a loss of 10 yards.
On 3rd and 30, Diabate and Zach Carter (two tackles, one for loss, 0.5 sack, one pass break-up) dropped him for another 10 yard loss.
The second drive, the Cats moved downfield yet again and converted a fourth down to keep the ball. But on 3rd and 1 from their own 46-yard line, Wilson handed off to Rose and TJ Slaton—along with Cox—seemed to swallow the 5-9 back whole.
The defensive drives sandwiched a scoring drive for the offense. From his own 44-yard line, quarterback Kyle Trask (21-27, 256 yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions) went 18 yards on a left side post route to tight end Kyle Pitts.
The nation’s leading statistical end—even despite missing the last two weeks with injury—took it the remaining 38 yards for the 56-yard touchdown and early score. Beating out former five-star corner Kelvin Joseph, Pitts could think of only one thing.
“I knew I had him by myself. It was man, and when Kyle threw it, I just, I said ‘don’t trip, don’t fall, just run as fast as you can’ so that was something where I just had to break away.”
The Gators—and the UF tight ends specifically—did more than admirably with Pitts out. Still, it’s a different animal with the future first round pick back in the game.
“I mean he’s a great weapon,” says Mullen, stating the obvious.
“I think he’s just such a dynamic playmaker that he can turn some smaller gains into pretty explosive, big plays. I think he does an amazing job of doing that and he creates matchup problems for you. He’s hard to deal with one-on-one. If you get him one-on-one we can take advantage of it. If you’re going to take him away I think everyone’s seen that we have a lot of weapons on the offensive side of the ball that can attack you.”
Adds Trask, “It's great. You know, Kyle is a phenomenal athlete and tight end. He causes a lot of mismatches for the defense, you know, causes a lot of chaos in the backend when they try to figure out how to guard him. So, it's great for us as an offense, as a whole.”
Trask threw three touchdowns on the day—all of them to Pitts—and is now tied for third with Rex Grossman for most touchdowns in a single season. Danny Wuerffel owns the top two numbers (35 in 1995; 39 in 1996) and with two regular season games left and a postseason, Trask will likely set a new record.
But that first touchdown—indicative of the topsy-turvy day in the sky and on the ground—was only possible thanks to a special teams play.
On 4th and 2 from their own 25-yard line, the offense stayed on the field as if to go for the conversion. At the last second, they ran off and the punt team ran on with Jacob Finn lining up to punt it away. A direct snap instead went to running back Dameon Pierce (STATS) and he found the left edge for a 15 yard gain.
On the opening play of the second quarter, a fumble gave Kentucky the ball in Florida territory and they turned it into a touchdown. A field goal midway through the quarter gave the Cats the 10-7 lead and Florida was at risk of trailing at halftime for the first time all season.
With the offense sputtering, Mullen was forced to punt from mid-field. Punter Jacob Finn sent a beauty high, rainbow-ing it to the 1-yard line. Receiver Tre Grimes was there to down it if needed…but it wasn’t needed. The ball rolled out and Kentucky was backed up into their own endzone.
The Cats having little room to work with and a reaming from Dan Mullen to the Gators defense on the sideline, Florida never let UK past its own 10-yard line.
Florida had studied Kentucky punter Max Duffy and knew he liked to run one way then sent it another. So they put two returners at midfield with instructions for one to fake the side.
In other words, if the ball went left, the person on that side would stand still while the other acted as if the ball was coming to him. Since the punt coverage unit would have their back to their punter, they wouldn’t know till it was too late.
With an acting job that would make Meryl Streep weep in appreciation, Xzavier Henderson pulled a gaggle of Kentucky defenders his way with a fair catch wave.
Opposite him, Kadarius Toney pulled in the ball. With a 10-yard radius of open grass, the speedster made them pay. His 50-yard return was the first punt return for a touchdown since Freddie Swain did it September 15, 2018; an 85-yard score vs Colorado State.
Explains Mullen, “I think a lot of people use two returners to figure out where he is going to punt. We wanted to use two returners to take advantage of that situation that they were in and see if he made a mistake. If he was supposed to punt it left and punted it right, you know, we thought, ‘OK, KT [Toney] is going to be all by himself.’ Or if he is supposed to punt it right, then Xzavier is going to be by himself.
“Our guys up front did a great job of holding it up to get the return going, and then you saw KT, once he got in the open field, he is a dangerous guy in the open field with the ball in his hand.”
Once special teams saved the day in the first half, everybody woke up in the third quarter. The first drive of the 3rd quarter looked like the Florida offense we’ve come to expect, with a five play, 75-yard drive that saw Trask hit three different receivers and a dose of Pierce.
It ended with a shot to Pitts in the back of the endzone. As he rocked the “baby“ to sleep in celebration—and a shot at the trash talking Kentucky’s defensive backs had taken at him during the week—the Gators went up 21-10 and wouldn’t look back.
“When I ran, I think it was a slant. It was man, and I said ‘oh, it’s time to work’ so I had him one-on-one” laughs Pitts.
This Gators offense is potent and even if opponents manage to keep the force at bay for the first half, Florida has proven too strong, too forceful to be held for long. It was just a matter of staying the course until the dam broke.
To help with that, the defense had to make adjustments. Dan Mullen was seen yelling at Todd Grantham during the first half like a parent reaming a teenager for leaving the door open and letting the dog escape for the 17th time.
Mullen swore after the game he was only yelling at his longtime coordinator for committing what is now a well known Mullen household violation and putting up his Christmas lights before Thanksgiving. Whatever came after that conversation though proved to flip the switch.
“The game is so much about adjustments,” says Mullen.
“People are going to come in and have some different wrinkles and different changes and do different things each week. I think our guys came in, made a great adjustment and our guys came out really motivated in the second half. I think they were probably a little disappointed with how they played in that first half. And that was Gator defense, really, from the last two minutes, from that last drive of the first half on, that was what we expect Gator defense to look like.”
In the first half, Grantham’s defense gave up 175 yards, 13 first downs, (2-8 on 3rd and 2-2 on 4th) as well as 41 total plays which took up 23:23 on the game clock.
In the second half, the defense—with the same lineup—gave up 46 total yards (25 of which were in garbage time against mostly freshmen), no third downs, no fourth downs and two total first downs. Kentucky ran 21 plays and held the ball for 9:56 of game time.
In total, the adjustments from the offense and defense allowed the Gators to score 27 unanswered points after the Toney punt return for a touchdown.
“We made a couple adjustments in the D-line and in the back end, just to kind of stop those runs, the longer runs that they had, nip that in the bud. I think we did a pretty good job,” remarks linebacker James Houston (eight tackles, 2.5 for loss).
“We definitely started off the game kinda slow. Second half, we made our adjustments. We did what we had to do. The defense came together as a unit. We basically said we’ve got to get three and outs. We’ve got to get off the field and get our offense the ball so we can start winning this game and start turning the corner.”
Of the seven drives Kentucky ran in the second half, four of them ended in three-and-outs and three in interceptions. The first was by linebacker Mohamoud Diabate, who hopped for the easy pick over the middle and put the offense in the redzone. It became the third #Kyle2Kyle touchdown of the day.
The second saw safety Shawn Davis (seven tackles, one for loss, one interception) center field a deep pass in a way that he has made his speciality. That became an Evan McPherson field goal for what would be the final score of 34-10.
And the final one was by freshman Tre’Vez Johnson, in late with freshmen and second string. He fought for a deep 50/50 ball and pulled the Joey Gatewood pass out for the final interception.
“It was great,” reflects Johnson.
“I mean, that was the first of many. But, like, it was good to get the win, I'm glad we came out with the win. But, it was exciting.”
At different times, each phase carried the other. It’s the sign of a team strong in all phases and complimentary football. But the difference between complimentary football and championship football is the ability to bring all three aspects of the team together into one game—ideally at one time.
That’s something the Gators haven’t been able to do yet. It’s a glaring omission and one Mullen wants fixed…but is also not too upset about it being an issue. In a way that a football coach’s mind works, Mullen sees the lack of consistency as a promise for it still to come.
“I don't think we've played a complete game yet,” admits Mullen.
“I think complete games are hard to get but I mean we were, our goal you know, we're not looking to peak as a team in the midpoint of the season, or you know, in the kind of the middle part of the season. We've got to continue to improve, continue to get better, and our job as coaches is to make sure we're coaching, teaching and motivating our guys to get better. Our guys job is to show up every day and work as hard as they can, have a great positive attitude and push themselves to try to improve. They can't get bored with repetition; they got to try to get better every single day.
“And that's really the ultimate goal of every team, is to do that and continue to push and continue to improve so you know, every week you can see things we do better and, you know, and see things that we've took a really good stride here or maybe we just were, you know, didn't do much didn’t, didn't improve much in certain areas and improved greatly in other areas. We want to keep doing that and keep getting better, so that you know season goes on, you get that late part of the season is when you want to peak and you're playing your absolute best, and you're playing great in three phases of the game.”
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