![Florida head coach Jon Sumrall watches the action during the first half of an NCAA football at Steve Spurrier Field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville, FL on Saturday, October 10, 2026. [Alan Youngblood/Gainesville Sun]](https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_crop,x_0,y_0,w_3000,h_1687/c_fill,w_720,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto/images/ReutersImages/mmsport/213/01m4ks74qgw79ht1e0d8.jpg "Florida head coach Jon Sumrall watches the action during the first half of an NCAA football at Steve Spurrier Field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville, FL on Saturday, October 10, 2026. [Alan Youngblood/Gainesville Sun]")
In the span of just seven days, Florida has gone from a turnaround success story that had a legit pathway to the playoffs to a team that has us revisiting all of our fears we had in November when it was announced Jon Sumrall would be the next head coach of the Gators.
And while this team was never going to win a national title, it’s not unfair to have a baseline level of expectations for Sumrall in his first year. And suddenly it looks like this squad is going to fall short of those expectations.
Florida gets demolished for the second week in a row
Florida was an 11-point favorite in this game, so let’s just pause here for a moment.
Whatever rebuild job one may think that Sumrall is or isn’t having to do in Gainesville, the people who build skyscrapers in the desert, and the people who correctly picked this same Florida team to beat Ole Miss, took last week’s loss to Missouri into account and still felt the Gators would win today comfortably.
And yet, for the second week in a row, the bottom fell out of a team that was supposed to be more reliable than last year’s team.
And yet, for the second week in a row, the team that previously bragged about “working the cut” had no answer when it got punched in the mouth.
And yet, for the second week in a row, Florida looked lost once things started going south.
It’s one thing to lose to Texas and Georgia. Those are two loaded programs, and it would be unfair to expect Sumrall to beat them in year one. But the reason these past two weeks have been problematic is that on paper, Florida has a more talented roster than Missouri and South Carolina.
We don’t want to use the word broken just yet, but something isn’t right. This South Carolina squad was winless in SEC play, and before the game we'd talked about how this could be Shane Beamer's swan song.
And yet, for the second week in a row, this looked like a team that would struggle to beat Arkansas.
Jon Sumrall has said he invites the pressure that comes with being the head coach at Florida.
We aren’t going to go the snake oil route that we went with the previous guy just yet, but losing by 19 points in a game you were favored by 11 does call into question what exactly has happened ever since this team walked off the field against Ole Miss.
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