Aaron Philo keeps answering the questions, and he did it again in his first SEC road start.
Florida spent the offseason with its quarterback battle under a microscope, and Philo was the guy plenty of fans had doubts about. There was real skepticism about whether he could be more than a steady hand in Buster Faulkner’s offense, especially with Tramell Jones drawing plenty of attention for his ceiling. Three games into the season, though, Philo has settled that argument the only way quarterbacks can: by running the offense well and delivering when the stage gets bigger.
Saturday at Auburn was supposed to be the real test. Philo had already looked sharp against FAU and Campbell at home, but doing it away from home in the SEC was a different kind of assignment. He passed it.
Philo finished 15 of 22 for 204 yards with a touchdown and an interception. That pick came with a bit of bad luck, too - just like the one against FAU, the ball bounced off the hands of his intended target and ended up in a defender’s hands.
And for all the noise around it being his first SEC road start, the scene itself never seemed to rattle him. The pressure point came down to Auburn burning a timeout at home to avoid a delay of game, not Florida.
Sumrall praised the way Philo carried himself and pointed to the edge in his personality as part of what makes him fit this moment:
"I thought he handled it really well, you know. He's got a little bit of, like, a cowboy mentality, man.
Like, he's tough as nails. He don't talk a whole lot just to talk, he ain't that type of dude, but he ain't gonna back down or nothing.
Like, I can tell watching him, just how he carries himself, I got a lot of confidence, and our team has a lot of confidence in him, just because that's the way he's wired. He's a tough, blue-collar, chip-on-your-shoulder type of guy."
What’s been especially notable is that Philo’s game has not been limited to short, cautious throws. Even with questions about arm strength hanging over him from the limited film available before the season, his average depth of target has been 9.0 yards through this point.
Among quarterbacks with at least 50 dropbacks this season, that still ranks in the top half nationally. By comparison, DJ Lagway posted an ADOT of 8.1 yards last year.
If Philo keeps stacking performances like this, Florida’s offense may not need much more than what it’s already getting.
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The quarterback side of the matchup also looms large, with Aaron Philo and Auburns Byrum Brown factoring into a game Navarro expects to stay tight into the final moments. His prediction has Brown guiding a late go-ahead drive, which is exactly the kind of ending Florida fans would rather not imagine before kickoff. For a team trying to build momentum early in the season, the margin for error in this one looks razor thin. [Read more 🡒]