It’s times like these that one wouldn’t expect a site like Hail Florida Hail to have a sense of positivity. The Gators just got smacked by Missouri in a way that we frankly have no defense for. It’s the kind of performance that we would have eviscerated the previous staff for.
But if one is looking to be like The Killers and be Mr. Brightside, there is a pathway that today’s meltdown in Columbia is a bump in the road rather than a set of spike strips.
Jon Sumrall has a pathway to recover from this debacle
As we pointed out in the immediate aftermath of today’s loss, Will Muschamp was the last coach to lose by at least 28 points in his debut season with the Gators. Things didn’t work out well for Muschamp, and it would be easy to look at today’s loss as a sign that things won’t work out for Jon Sumrall in the long run.
But, with history as a guide, today’s blowout is simply worth a bookmark until we gain further information.
We say this because in 2005, Urban Meyer got blasted 31-3 by Alabama.
In 1990, Steve Spurrier got blasted 45-3 against Tennessee.
Both of those coaches wound up winning a national title down the road, but we need a second piece of the puzzle to know which direction things are going to go with Sumrall before declaring if this loss was no big deal.
In Muschamp's case, his 30-point blowout win over LSU came one week after he got blasted by Alabama. He followed that up with losses to Auburn and Georgia. Meyer followed up his 2005 blowout with a 26-point win over Mississippi State. Spurrier followed up his 1990 blowout with a 59-point win over Akron and a 41-point win over Auburn.
We don’t want to excuse this loss, and what’s hard about a moment like this is trying to make declarative statements about Sumrall when we ultimately have just five games to judge him on. Next week against South Carolina, and the week after against Texas, will tell us a lot about who Sumrall will be in the long term.
Win against South Carolina by 10+ points, and even if you lose close against Texas, we would say, “That Missouri loss wasn’t great, but they recovered.”
What we do know is that all the goodwill Florida had coming out of last week seemingly went down the drain within three hours this Saturday. It’s up to Sumrall to win it back.
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