Florida Football: Wildcats Will Regress to Kitty Basketball School Inside The Swamp

Florida football will be looking for redemption inside Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on Saturday night, when the no. 12 Florida Gators and no. 20 Kentucky Wildcats will combat one another on the gridiron for the 73rd time in history.

It has been nearly 105 years since these two SEC programs first played against each other, with the Wildcats earning a decisive 52-0 home victory on Thanksgiving weekend back in 1917.

But since that first encounter, the Gators have gone on to take a firm grip in this divisional showdown, hoisting an all-time record of 53-19. This includes at one time a 31-game winning streak for Florida that lasted from the middle part of Galen Hall’s tenure in 1987 to the end of Jim McElwain’s infamous tenure in 2017.

Though in the past five years, the attitude of this rivalry has shifted from a one-sided beatdown to a typical SEC slobber knocker.

Over the past five games between both programs, the average margin of victory has been a field goal, with the Gators emerging victorious three times.

However, the Wildcats enter the Swamp with bragging rights, as they emerged victorious last season in an ugly 20-13 win.

It was that loss in Lexington that led to one of Dan Mullen’s most infamous post-game quotes.

"“No. 382 yards. I guess that’s sputtering,” Mullen said when speaking about Florida’s offensive struggles against Kentucky. “We had 382 and they had 211.”"

While excuses could be made for Mullen to lose against the reigning national champions two weeks prior, a second loss in four seasons to a program once labeled as a basketball school was unjustified.

And of course Mullen was fired shortly after Florida suffered an additional four losses in a five-game span.

Rather than coaching against Mullen for the 11th time during his head coaching tenure at Kentucky, Mark Stoops will instead face a fourth different Florida head coach in the form of Billy Napier.

To say that the Gators are riding a tidal wave of momentum heading into the weekend would be a massive understatement.

After catapulting the 2023 recruiting class to the top 10 nationally before coaching a single game, Napier won his Florida debut 29-26 in a dramatic, strategic battle of coaching prowess against Kyle Whittingham and no. 7 Utah last Saturday night. Saturday’s win against the Utes also made Florida the biggest mover in the AP polls, going from unranked to no. 12 in the country.

Though the Gators enter Saturday’s contest as a 5.5-point favorite, Napier is not taking the Wildcats for granted.

"“They’ve got some unique players that maybe weren’t highly-regarded but they’re as good as anybody in the country, so this is a good developmental program that I have nothing but respect for,” Napier said during his Monday press conference. “You gotta beat Kentucky because they’re going to make you beat them. I think they’re a well-coached team and I got a lot of respect for the intangibles, the effort, the fundamentals; all the things that coaches respect, they do those things.”"

Napier is correct that Florida should not overlook Kentucky this weekend. Especially when the whole city of Lexington treats a game against Florida like any other program would treat a regular season game against the likes of Alabama or Georgia.

And while Saturday night is likely to feature another thrilling chapter to this revived SEC rivalry, there is also a good chance that it could wind up being a massive blowout in favor of the Gators.

Recent history shows that in five of the last seven games played in Gainesville, the Wildcats have lost to the Gators by 24 points or more.

While Kentucky emerged victorious in last year’s matchup against the Gators, the narrative was more centered around the plethora of mental errors made by Florida throughout the game.

The Gators had 15 penalties for 115 yards last year in Lexington. Eight of those penalties were false starts by Florida’s offensive line, primarily related to the raucous environment from the home crowd at Kroger Field.

Though the Gators accumulated seven penalties against Utah, it’s more than reasonable to expect the Gators not to accumulate up to eight false start penalties in front of a sold-out home crowd.

Perhaps the other two biggest in-game battles that will play a huge part in a potential Florida victory this weekend will be the ground game and time of possession.

Despite losing last year’s game, the Gators offense held the ball for more than 36 minutes against the Wildcats, as well as outrushed them 171-137.

While the Gators lost the time of possession battle last week against Utah, it was a combination of the productivity from Florida’s offensive line and the playmaking ability from both Anthony Richardson and Florida’s stable of running backs that allowed the Gators to rush for 283 yards against a Utah defense that allowed an average of just 126.1 rush yards a game in 2021.

Perhaps even more remarkable than Florida’s rushing numbers against Utah was their ability to convert on the money downs.

Against the Utes, Florida was 7-12 on third down attempts, and more impressively 2-2 on fourth downs. This included a clutch nine-yard rush by quarterback Anthony Richardson on 4th & 2 that led to the game-winning touchdown four plays later.

Though the Wildcats returned six starters from their defense that ranked 16th nationally against the rush last year, there are already some question marks about the capability of this year’s unit against the rush.

Last Saturday Miami, OH managed to put up 290 yards of total offense against the Wildcats. Though the Wildcats won 37-13, it was Miami’s ability to outrush Kentucky 111-50 on the ground that kept the RedHawks at least within a field goal’s distance of the lead heading into halftime.

As bleak as Kentucky’s rushing attack looked last weekend, it looks even more grim as they enter SEC competition this weekend against Florida football.

Earlier this week it was announced that transfer running back Ramon Jefferson will be out for the remainder of the season with a torn ACL suffered against Miami. And early on Friday it was announced that star running back Chris Rodriguez Jr. would again be unavailable to play, as he awaits potential punishments from the NCAA pertaining to his DUI charge back in May.

Going into Saturday night, the top 2 returning rushers for the Wildcats are running back Kavosiey Smoke and quarterback Will Levis. Against Florida football last year both players combined for 38 rushing yards off 10 carries. However, both combined for only 14 rushing yards on 14 carries last week against Miami.

In other words, Kentucky should be a one-dimensional offense against the Gators this Saturday. But the thought of Will Levis slinging the football shouldn’t have the Gators secondary shaking in their Jordans.

Since transferring to Kentucky, Levis has thrown more than 200 yards in one SEC game, which came in a 45-42 home defeat against Tennessee.

Though Levis threw for 303 yards and three touchdowns against the RedHawks in week 1, his QBR of 46.0 ranked near the bottom of all SEC quarterbacks last weekend.

If the football gods wanted to make this game a much fairer fight on offense, they would force both teams to swap starting quarterbacks for the night. Maybe even force either Nay’Quan Wright, Montrell Johnson or Trevor Ettiene to start in the backfield for the Wildcats too. Especially when considering that Kentucky’s entire projected backfield heading into their SEC opener has less than 300 career rushing attempts against Division I competition.

While Tennessee fans will disagree, Saturday’s game is bound to determine which team is most likely to give the Georgia Bulldogs the biggest run for their money in the SEC East race this season. In fact, the winner of this game has gone on to either win or finish runner-up in the SEC East in each of the past four seasons.

Over the summer Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari said that the UK athletic department needed to focus its resources on building a new practice facility for its basketball team, while simultaneously taking shots at Stoops’ program by calling Kentucky a basketball school.

"“I hope they win 10 games and go to bowls,” Calipari said to The Athletic. “But this is a basketball school. And so we need to keep moving in that direction and keep doing what we’re doing.”"

If Anthony Richardson and Florida’s running back stable run all over Kentucky’s defense similar to how they ran against Utah just a week ago, the entire SEC fan base may agree with Calipari before the clock hits zero in Gainesville.

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