Jon Sumrall reveals a quiet fear about Florida as spring practice rolls on

Now that Jon Sumrall has been able to get his hands on the Florida roster, he is not a happy camper. A week into spring practice, Sumrall is admitting that there is plenty of work to be done between now and September.

The good news is that it is not expected for Florida in March to not be where it needs to be in September. The question mark Sumrall raised on Tuesday is whether or not Florida is where they should be, even for March.

Jon Sumrall is glad it is March

The first question Sumrall was asked at his press conference on Tuesday was what areas he wanted to see the Gators improve in, whether it was physicality, attention to detail, or others. He opened with stating that he is glad it is March because there is a lot of work to be done.

And the way Sumrall explained it, if one were planning a parade for after the season, those plans need to be put on hold until further notice:

“We don't have enough time to talk about everything I want to see improve. To me, it's consistently straining with intent and doing the right thing over and over and over. Most football games aren't won, they're lost. You can't beat anybody until you don't beat yourself. 

We're a long way away from being a team that doesn't beat ourselves. I've watched this practice four times now, and we're green. You know, it's 50-something new players and not a ton of returning starters. I think we lost seven or eight on each side of the ball of returning starters. So it's just a very young, unproven team in so many areas.”

For the most part, that seems like mostly standard coach speak, and Sumrall is trying to piece together an entirely new roster. But his follow-up quote made it seem like Florida might be further away from the endgame goal than Sumrall wants to be right now:

“There's a process to everything you do. The process I want to do is win right now, like today. And I'm a little uncomfortable because we're so far away from where I want us to be that, I'm not going to lie, I'm a little on edge. And it's just we're so far away. We're going to be fine. But we're just so far away that we can't be casual.”

Process oriented

Now, anytime Sumrall brings up there being a process, the ghost of Billy Napier peeks around the corner. But one thing we have said about Sumrall is that he seems to recognize in the modern era, there are opportunities to win in year one rather than go “Ah shucks.”

Is Florida actually far away, or is Sumrall just trying to keep his team on edge?

Who knows, but we will say it is encouraging that he isn’t being lulled into a false sense of security. One thing that seemed to define the Billy Napier Era is that he looked at Florida’s roster compared to the one he had at Louisiana and seemed in awe of what his new players could do.

Sumrall just spent four years at the Group of Five level and isn’t sold on his team despite having far superior athletes than he did at Tulane.

We won’t have definitive answers as to whether or not Florida is ready until September. Until then, Gator fans will be relegated to reading between the lines of their new coach.