The scoreboard said blowout, but the scoreboard lied

Sometimes the scoreboard lies.

At halftime of Saturday’s homecoming game with Vanderbilt at The Swamp, the Gators held a 21-0 lead, which looks good on the scoreboard. What Dan Mullen, the announced crowd of 86,258 and SEC Network audience saw, however, was a Florida team that played bored and uninspired football.

The talent differential was evident on Florida’s first two possessions when the Gators took a 14-0 lead, marching 78 yards on seven plays on a drive that ended on a 1-yard blast for a TD by Dameon Pierce and 49 yards on seven plays with Emory Jones throwing five yards to Ja’Quavion Fraziars to go up 14-0 with 5:23 left in the first quarter. Not only was it 14-0, but it was Florida 121 yards, Vandy 26.

Maybe it was just too easy at that point. Maybe the Gators saw how bad Vanderbilt is and their 18-to-22-year-old mindset told them to set the cruise control because there was no way they could play bad enough to lose to the Commodores.

Or maybe, it was that problem that hasn’t been solved all year, the one of consistency. We’ve seen the Gators do remarkable things like dominate Alabama for three quarters but lose because they played the entire first quarter having left their game somewhere along the path of the Gator Walk. Whatever the problem, the Gators definitely let down their guard and with the exception of a 4-play, 60-yard drive that concluded with a Jones to Trent Whittemore TD pass from nine yards out in the second quarter, the Gators were outplayed by a Vanderbilt team that may be fortunate to stay within two or three touchdowns of the remaining six teams on their schedule.

Here is a list of some, but not all of the problems in the first half.

There were two interceptions – one on Anthony Richardson, one on Jones. There were 15 missed tackles. There were four penalties, the two worst a late hit personal foul on Mohamoud Diabate and a targeting call that got Tre’Vez Johnson ejected. There was confusion with the coverage because Vandy kept running the same play, a little swing pass out in the flat to receivers who probably aren’t this open in skeleton drills on the practice field. Vandy went 4-7 on third down conversions. Vanderbilt controlled the ball for 11:17 in the second quarter, 19:50 in the first half.

As bad as that was, it could have been really embarrassing for the Gators except that Vanderbilt contributed mightily to the first half zero it hung on the scoreboard. Vandy field goal kicker Joseph Bulovas showing exactly why he doesn’t kick for Alabama anymore by boinking a 39-yard field goal attempt and then going wide left from 41 yards out on the next drive. He would make it a hat trick in the third quarter when he missed a 33-yarder. There was also a touchdown pass with 30 seconds left that was overturned by the replay booth.

Florida held a 21-0 lead at the half but the Gators were playing anything like a team with a 3-touchdown lead. They played bored. You wouldn’t think they would have been. You would think the Gators would have come out breathing fire to get the sour taste of last week’s 20-13 loss to Kentucky out of their mouths.

Whatever the problem, Mullen left the field at halftime in somewhat of a foul mood. When the SEC Network sideline reporter asked him a question, his answer was four words. Obviously, he wanted to save whatever was on his mind for the team waiting for him in the locker room.

“They played 50 snaps, [we] gave up over 200 yards of offense, couldn’t get off the field,” Mullen explained after the Gators had finished off Vanderbilt, 42-0. “They were on the field the entire half with the exception of our first, I think, two drives were three and outs … missed tackles. Giving up third-down conversions.”

That should never happen. It was against Vanderbilt. Yes, the Commodores are members of the Southeastern Conference, the best league in the entire country, but they are perpetual bottom feeders. It’s reminiscent of a card-carrying member of the Screen Actors Guild. A bit player or extra on the movie set carries the same card as the movie star, who will be paid millions for a leading role. The Commodores are the SEC’s bit players. The Gators or any other decent SEC team should never have a game when they don’t play like movie stars against the Commodores.

There is no logical reason why the Gators didn’t score two or three more touchdowns in the first half other. Vanderbilt was stacking the line and the short routes, practically daring Jones to throw downfield. He obliged and found open receivers. The Gators should have scored more and Vanderbilt should have never had three shots at scoring.

Things changed dramatically in the third quarter, but even then it took a trick play to light a fire under the Gators. When they couldn’t convert a 3rd-and-4 after taking the second half kickoff, Mullen sent in the punt team but instead of kicking away, Jeremy Crawshaw took off running around the left side for 28 yards to the Vanderbilt 45. The Gators still had a couple of shots to the foot that had to be taken – a false start on Stewart Reese and a holding call on Jean Delance – but on 2nd-and-26 from the UF 39, Jones found Pierce running wide open at the Vandy 35 for an easy pitch-and-catch touchdown pass.

The Gators made it 35-0 on their next possession when Jones threw his fourth touchdown pass of the game, a 25-yard connection with Jacob Copeland to finish a 2-play, 72-yard drive. Pierce got the final TD on a 1-yard run on Florida’s next drive, set up by Trey Dean’s first interception of the season.

In the third quarter the Gators outscored the Commodores, 21-0, and outgained them, 202-33. That’s the way Florida should have played the entire game. As displeased as he was with the way the Gators played in the first quarter, Mullen thought the Gators atoned for their first half problems after they came out of the halftime locker. No matter, he still knows the Gators missed an opportunity to play a full game. Against an opponent as poor as Vanderbilt, it should never take the head coach challenging his team to get them to play a dominating half of football.

“I got after them,” Mullen said. “I don’t want to downplay that we didn’t give up any points, but you look at a lot of things. We didn’t give up some points on mistakes maybe by Vanderbilt more than us dominating and shutting them down completely. Now we made the plays to put them in those tough situations. We made the stop in the first-and-goal situation. We made the stop on four straight plays. We made the stop to force them into some field goals. So, I’m really pleased with those aspects of thing but the standard is not just to make a stop at the end of the drive. The standard is every single snap from play one of the drive. I thought we did that in the second half. That’s something we can really build off of.”

Vanderbilt’s 200 first half yards were far too many but the Commodores managed only 87 in the final two quarters. Florida, on the other hand, had 215 yards in the first half and 254 in the second. It would have been more except Mullen pretty much played everyone on the depth chart in the fourth quarter.

So, yes, the second half is something from which the Gators can build, but we have to take into consideration that there is a rather hefty margin for error against the likes of Vanderbilt. You can get away with mistakes against Vanderbilt without paying a severe price. Next week against LSU in Baton Rouge, the margin for error will shrink considerably. Judging by the way Georgia manhandled Auburn Saturday, it would seem the margin for error in Jacksonville on October 30 will be almost microscopic.

Mullen put a positive spin on the second half, which is what you would expect of any head coach. Postgame was not the time nor was it the place to call out his players other in the most general of terms. But, even as he was standing there doing his best to put things into an optimistic perspective the wheels had to be turning rapidly in his brain, telling him that if the Gators don’t play better the next two games, they’ll lose.

These next two games against LSU and Georgia are going to go a long way toward defining the 2021 season. The effort we saw Saturday at The Swamp or anything remotely close just isn’t going to cut it. Lose those two games and the Gators will have trouble punching their tickets to something like the Outback Bowl or the Gator Bowl. Split the two or do the almost unthinkable by winning them both, and a New Years Six bowl is possible for the fourth straight year.

But going 1-1 or 2-0 won’t happen unless the Gators decide to play 60 full minutes. Nobody knows it more than Dan Mullen.

“Are we playing at the level we need to play at with the intensity we need to play at?” he asked, perhaps already looking past the Vandy game and at the next two on the schedule. “I don't know that we did that for the first half as a whole. There's things I can circle in the first half that were great and there's things I can circle in the first half that just were not up to our standard. And our job as coaches is to make sure we are up to our standard on every snap."

Every snap. Every quarter. Sixty minutes. That is something that hasn’t happened this year and it is a trend that is becoming worrisome. If the Gators had played as well as they are capable of playing for four full quarters of all six games, they would be unbeaten right now and looking like a team that is capable of winning a championship. Instead, they are a team that only plays to its capabilities in spurts and that makes us ask exactly what is it going to take to get a sustained, consistent effort from this team?

Because of the inconsistency, we can look at the final 42-0 score against Vanderbilt and know that the scoreboard lied to us. The scoreboard made it look like the Gators took Vanderbilt to the woodshed but that’s nothing more than a scoreboard lie.

It was a win by 42 points so technically speaking it was a blowout, but real blowouts leave you feeling that the winning team was in complete control and dominating. Other than those first two drives of the game and the third quarter, that isn’t what we saw Saturday against Vanderbilt no matter what the scoreboard or the stat sheet tell us.