Florida Football: Gators Received Reality Check in Nashville

To label Saturday’s 31-24 loss to Vanderbilt as just a major embarrassment for the Florida football program would be an understatement.

Florida head coach Billy Napier didn’t bother to sugarcoat the impact of losing to Vanderbilt either after Saturday’s game.

“It’s a setback, there’s no question about it,” Napier said during his post-game press conference. “A little bit of a reality check to some degree.”

Saturday’s loss marked the first time the Gators have lost on the road to the Commodores since 1988.

When Napier mentioned that this loss was a setback, he was not singularly referring to this season. The Gators arrived in Nashville with a 6-4 overall record and were eliminated from all championship conversations before the beginning of November.

The setback Napier was referring to was regarding all the positive progress the team made in its previous two games against Texas A&M and South Carolina.

Entering the weekend the Gators were ranked 14th nationally in terms of average penalty yards per game (39.3). But against Vanderbilt the Gators doubled that total with 80 yards off seven penalties. Three of those penalties were committed by the defense on third down, giving Vanderbilt a free conversion and allowing them to extend drives that eventually ended in points.

Outside of penalties, the two biggest factors in Saturday’s outcome was Florida’s inability to run the football and turnovers.

One week ago the Gators rushed for a season-high 374 yards against South Carolina. Against Vanderbilt the script was flipped, as the Gators accumulated a season-low 45 yards on 21 carries.

The Gators also entered Nashville with one of the best turnover margins in the nation. In their two previous wins, the Gators won the turnover battle by a combined 5-1 margin.

Even though the Gators drew even with the Commodores in terms of turnovers (2-2), the Commodores were more successful in capitalizing off of Florida’s mistakes.

Late in the second quarter the Gators were only down 7-6 and the defense had just held the Commodores to a three-and-out. But sophomore cornerback Jason Marshall Jr. fumbled the ball while attempting to fair catch Vanderbilt’s punt inside Florida’s 10-yard line, allowing the Commodores to recover it in the end zone for their second touchdown of the quarter.

Then on Florida’s second drive on offense in the second half, the Gators were faced with a 3rd & 10 while trailing Vanderbilt 21-12. Florida quarterback Anthony Richardson attempted to avoid a sack by throwing to wide receiver Thai Chiaokhiao-Bowman in the flat.

Instead, the ball bounced off his hands and Vanderbilt’s Jaylen Mahoney was able to cradle it in for a miraculous interception. One play later Vanderbilt found the end zone off a 28-yard catch by tight end Ben Bresnahan.

Rather than ending their SEC schedule on a three-game winning streak, the Gators instead bookend their conference schedule with losses to Kentucky and Vanderbilt. This season marked the first time Florida has lost to both Kentucky and Vanderbilt in the same season since 1974.

The Gators loss to Vanderbilt also hands them their second straight losing record in the SEC (3-5). The last time the Gators accumulated back-to-back losing conference records was in 1958 and ’59.

With the way the Gators manhandled Texas A&M and South Carolina at the beginning of the month, it gave off a perception that this Florida football program was on the verge of turning the corner under Billy Napier and maybe even ending the season on a five-game winning streak.

Alas, Saturday’s loss was a nagging reminder that Florida football is still nowhere close to competing with the likes of Georgia and Alabama for the SEC crown.

When Billy Napier was hired as the head coach for Florida’s football team last December, it was not with the mindset that he needed to just re-patch certain parts of the roster in a attempt to make this team title contenders almost immediately.

We saw the Gators do that five years ago when Florida Athletic Director Scott Stricklin hired Dan Mullen after it was reported that both Chip Kelly and Scott Frost passed on the Florida job. And while the first 35 games of Mullen’s tenure were a spectacle to watch, eventually the instability that came with Mullen’s implemented culture eventually revealed itself and caused the Florida football program to collapse.

When the Gators took the field against the Commodores this past Saturday, 19 of Florida’s 22 starters were already at UF prior to Napier’s arrival and were subjected to lackluster accountability presented by Mullen and his coaching staff.

That is not to say that the majority of the blame for Saturday’s loss should be directed at Dan Mullen, nor does it mean that it is acceptable for Florida to lose to Vanderbilt on the gridiron. Despite the Gators lacking quality depth on the roster, they are still much more talented than the Commodores.

But what Saturday’s loss did was serve as a fresh reminder that there are still issues with discipline on this roster and that several players are just not good, natural fits for what Napier is trying to rebuild at Florida. There have already been several reports published that mention several unnamed Florida players will be leaving the program at the end of the season, either via the transfer portal or declaring for April’s NFL Draft.

As of Nov. 22 the Gators currently sit with the 8th highest ranked class in the 2023 recruiting cycle, with 22 commitments in total. That number will likely wind up being closer to 30 before spring practice begins, with the Gators picking up additional talent from both the high school ranks and the transfer portal.

While many fans would love to see their team’s new head coach succeed almost immediately, and there have been some cases of that happening (see Mullen’s first season in 2018), it is generally years two and three where we see the new coaches start to really reap the rewards for their efforts both on and off the field. Wit the way Napier and his staff have been active on the recruiting trail throughout the entire 2022 calendar year, the Gators appear to be heading in the right direction with refilling the roster with plenty of blue-chip talent.

But with National Early Signing Day still four weeks away, there are still two more games for this year’s Florida Gators team to play. Starting this Friday night in Tallahassee against archrival Florida State.

Never in the history of Florida’s football program have the Gators lost to Tennessee, Georgia and Florida State in the same season. The Gators will head into Black Friday’s game as 9.5-point road underdogs.

As discouraging as it was for the Gators to experience just their second loss to Vanderbilt in the past 34 years, there is still plenty to play for this season. Mainly an active three-game winning streak against the Seminoles and the program’s first bowl victory since their 36-28 Orange Bowl win against Virginia.

While there is a good chance that half of Florida’s starters this week will not be on the team next year, a road upset this week would go a long way in helping the Florida football program recover for Saturday’s embarrassment in Nashville and move forward with Napier’s vision in rebuilding the Gators as championship contenders in years to come.

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