Jon Sumrall didn’t try to sugarcoat Florida’s 45-17 loss at Missouri. In his sixth appearance at Gator Talk, the Gators’ head coach made it clear he wants the defeat to linger just long enough to matter.
“I’m not into the whole idea of ‘we’ll just bury it or just move past it,’” he said. “I’m like ‘no, you have to own it.’
You need to have that bad taste in your mouth and the sick feeling in your stomach for a little bit. Because if you don’t, then you don’t understand what you want to avoid moving forward.”
Florida was without receiver Vernell Brown III, who is the Gators’ “highest-touch guy” behind running back Jadan Baugh, and safety Bryce Thornton was injured before the game. But Sumrall wasn’t interested in pinning the loss on absences alone.
The bigger issue, he said, was what Missouri exposed. Florida’s secondary was hit for 340 passing yards by Mizzou quarterback Austin Simmons, and that was the kind of breakdown Sumrall said the team needs to confront head-on.
He pointed to Thornton’s absence as a real factor, saying Florida felt a “void” without the safety’s veteran presence and high football IQ. That meant other players had to stretch beyond their usual roles and “do more than what they’re used to doing because [Thornton] is sort of the guy that sets the table for the people around him.”
After the game, Sumrall told his players exactly how he wanted them to react to the setback.
“I told the guys in the locker room after the game, I said, ‘guys, if this doesn’t hurt you, like if this doesn’t bother you and make you a little bit frustrated and angry, we have a real problem, like bigger than losing the game,’” Sumrall said.
With that loss now on the record, Florida turns to South Carolina, a team Sumrall believes is more dangerous than its 2-3 (0-3 SEC) mark suggests. He said the Gamecocks remind him a little of last season’s Florida squad, loaded with talent but not always getting the results to match.
Quarterback LaNorris Sellers gives South Carolina dual-threat juice, and its run defense has been strong enough to make Saturday’s Homecoming game anything but a walkover.
“They are extremely talented from an athletic standpoint,” Sumrall said. “They’re as good as anybody.”
Florida is also planning for weather. Sumrall said the Gators will work with wet footballs on Tuesday in case conditions turn messy on Saturday.
And with more than 90,000 fans expected at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium for Homecoming, Florida’s morning practice routine could help with the 12:45 p.m. kickoff. Sumrall said the Gators are better equipped for early starts because they already operate on that kind of schedule.
“They’re a little bit used to the morning routine,” he said. “When you’re an afternoon practice team, you’re worried about the noon kickoff and maybe not being awake, but because we’re a morning team, the nighttime games are the ones that I feel like we have to do a little extra to make sure they’re wide awake for.”
The next Gator Talk is set for Oct. 12 at 7 p.m.
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