For the first month of the season, it felt like Florida was a juggernaut that just needed to tighten up a thing or two to be a legit playoff contender in 2026. The Gators were five point favorites heading into Columbia and if they could clear Missouri, the pathway to the playoffs was a near certainty,
But instead, every negative offseason narrative one could think of about the Gators came to life as Florida got smacked in a way seldom did the previous staff ever get smacked.
Florida falls straight into a trap against Missouri
Dan Mullen was defeated by 28 points or more just once: The 2020 Sugar Bowl against Oklahoma when Florida had zero ****s to give.
The Man in the Black Polo was beaten by 28 points or more twice: 2024 vs. Texas and 2025 vs. Kentucky. And if we are getting technical, that man was fired prior to that Kentucky game.
Even Jim McElwain waited until the bowl game in his debut season to get blown out by this much.
Not since Will Muschamp in 2011 has a Florida head coach lost by at least 28 points during their debut season, and yet here we are.
We will be blunt: we did not see a blowout of this magnitude coming. We bought into the hype that if Florida was to lose today, it would be close. This was the same Missouri squad that just lost to Mississippi State, who themselves just got blown out by Alabama.
And this is the same Missouri squad with a well-documented history of faceplanting against ranked opponents.
But Florida’s offensive line looked like the statutes we had feared they would be this offseason. The defense under coordinator Brad White looked like the exploitable defense we had mused about the instant he was hired. And even though there were some calls from the refs that should have been more favorable to Florida, the Gators were the team that folded in the face of adversity.
We said before the game that Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz is a frontrunner, and it won’t shock us when this piece is published that he spazzes out on social media. But given the lack of resistance Florida gave him today, who could blame him?
Relevant to Florida, we expect Jon Sumrall to say all of the right things in the aftermath of this game.
Whether or not they get fixed can’t be answered until next week against South Carolina.
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