Florida Football: Do moral victories matter when you are the Gators?

Florida football walked into Missouri with the feeling of a dead team walking prior to Saturday night. The Gators were coming off the worst defensive performance in program history, both their starting linebackers were out, their starting left tackle was out, and Columbia, MO as a whole has not been kind to the Gators.

To add to the misery, Graham Mertz and Damieon George went down during the game.

So losing to the ninth ranked team in the country on a last second field goal isn’t the end of the world for a team fielding almost nothing but freshmen and backups.

But when you are the Florida Gators, do moral victories actually matter?

Florida Football: They played hard

If there was any narrative floating around that Billy Napier had lost the team, it didn’t hold water on Saturday. Outside of a couple nitpick plays, this team looked like it was ready to run through a brick wall all game long.

In the case of Mertz, he might as well have and it cost him his season.

But the fact that Florida looked fired up and looked like a team ready to put it all on the line is part of the problem under the Napier Era. Too often we have seen efforts like last night or the one we saw against Tennessee be followed up by duds in Kentucky or Vanderbilt where the squad looked like it wanted to be anywhere else in the world.

The consistency issues week to week are part of why Napier is now 11-13 in his Florida football coaching career.

No, it’s not reasonable to expect a team of freshmen and backups to actually pull off the victory on the road. Even Georgia would have struggled if forced to field nothing but freshmen.

But the other concern that has developed under the Napier Era is that when presented with the chance to snatch victory, something just always seems to go wrong.

Close but no cigar

Last season the Gators were driving against Kentucky to take the lead when Anthony Richardson threw a pick-six that the Gators never recovered from.

Both last season and this season Florida pulled within one score of LSU in the fourth quarter, only to promptly allow a touchdown.

Against Vanderbilt, with the Gators struggling, Xzavier Henderson fumbled a punt into the endzone and the Gators would lose by seven.

Against FSU, Florida scored to tie the game in the fourth quarter only to promptly surrender a touchdown.

Against Utah this season, the repeated miscues on special teams doomed any chance Florida had.

Against Arkansas, the Gators couldn’t figure out when to send the field goal unit on the field and missed a kick that would have won the game.

And last night, we all know about 4th and 17.

If it happens once, you chalk it up to bad luck. If it keeps happening, you become Scott Frost.

Barring a complete collapse of his 2024 recruiting class, Napier is going to return as the head coach of the Florida Gators. What he has to articulate is that as he gets in better talent, is that talent going to know when to run onto the field for a field goal? Is that talent going to stop a 4th and 17 when asked to play soft underneath zone?

Last night was a moral victory. But in time, these moral victories will need to become real victories.