Florida football: Gators remind us that blowout wins are still possible

Playing in front of a half-empty stadium on a somewhat warm Sunday afternoon, there was every reason in the world why Florida football might have sleepwalked its way past Eastern Washington.

And despite some early angst with the Florida Gators defense, Billy Napier ensured his squad was ready to smack an inferior opponent in the mouth.

Florida football: Good teams win, great teams cover

After opening up with the 2nd hardest schedule on all of college football through four weeks, the Gators went into Sunday against an overmatched FCS opponent. Eastern Washington is ranked within FCS, but also lost earlier this year to Oregon 70-14.

Florida football also had an overmatched opponent when it played USF, and well, um, it didn’t seem like it.

And after Eastern Washington’s first drive went 13 plays, featured multiple missed tackles, and ended in a field goal, the ghosts of USF were waiting in the wings to come back out.

Anthony Richardson told them to stay where they were.

Florida’s offense scored five touchdowns on five drives in the first half. And they did it in 20 plays. It looked like what happens when you set the difficulty on NCAA 14 to Freshman when trying to rack up stats for an achievement.

The encouraging sign for Richardson is that of his right completions, five went for over twenty yards.

The defense, which featured a lot of new guys like Kamari Wilson and Tyreak Sapp, eventually stiffened up. Shemar James and Scooby Williams got more valuable experience at linebacker and Williams looked much better compared to his USF outing.

Florida football: Jalen Kitna gives hope

The other big storyline for Florida football was the performance of backup QB Jalen Kitna. After a terrible Spring Game, Napier and crew have tried to be cautious with Richardson because of what is behind him.

Kitna entered for a couple of passes in the first half when Richardson had an injury scare, but when he was put back in for the second half he looked like a whole difficult QB than in the Spring.

https://twitter.com/gatorsfb/status/1576637709984051200?s=46&t=GLxB7OLMT6DBZaiSY8r1vw

Kitna finished 8/12 passing for 153 yards in basically one half of action. His performance should at least quell some of the fear the Florida football coaching staff has should he be forced into action down the road.

We also guys like Diwun Black and Lorenzo Lingard get valuable playing time and despite a couple of garbage time TD’s from Eastern Washington, it was an easy day for the Gators as the focus has to immediately turn to Missouri with one less day to prepare than normal.

Keep up with all things Florida football with Hail Florida Hail.