Florida has bigger problems than the scoreboard heading into Saturday’s trip to No. 7 Texas.
After back-to-back losses in Southeastern Conference play, Jon Sumrall isn’t just trying to clean up the on-field mistakes. He’s taking a hard look at the team’s mindset, too - especially after what he saw at halftime against South Carolina.
Down by just one possession, Florida didn’t look like a team ready to pounce.
“I walk in the locker room, I look around and look at the guys, and man, you'd have thought somebody's dog died,” Sumrall said. “I'm like, boys, we're down seven points, and we get the ball … We got a pulse, we got a chance, life's pretty good here, let's go.”
That reaction bothered him. More than the scheme, more than the matchup, it was the response that stood out. Sumrall said his staff is working to help the players handle those in-game swings better, because in this league close games are the norm and teams have to know how to keep swinging when they’re on the wrong side of the score.
He pointed to Week 5 at Missouri as another example. Florida went into halftime trailing 20-10 there, and the second half went the same way it did against South Carolina: the Gators gave up 20-plus points after the break in both games and managed just one touchdown total in those stretches.
“We have not responded well, and there is something to that,” Sumrall said. “There is a belief, a confidence, an intestinal fortitude of ‘I'm going to fight till the finish, don't even care about what the scoreboard says, and then we'll look at the end of the game and see what the scoreboard says,’ and so that is a concern of mine. It is something I saw and felt the last two games that we've got to get corrected.”
He said this isn’t something that has followed him through previous stops, which is part of why it has stood out so sharply over the last two weeks.
At the same time, Sumrall is making sure the team doesn’t get stuck staring backward. Florida can’t afford to carry the weight of the last two losses into Austin, and he made it clear he wants the group moving forward, not wallowing.
“There's going to be no woe is me, downtrodden deal,” Sumrall said. “We got to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, move on.”
There have been some signs of progress, at least in Sumrall’s eyes. He believes the team has gotten tougher, especially in the way it has played through injuries. Still, he also saw fatigue creeping in late in both recent games.
The injury conversation also included wide receiver Vernell Brown III, and Sumrall pushed back on talk about when Brown might return. He sounded frustrated by the speculation and said Brown is doing everything he can to get back.
“He's trying like hell to play, I can promise you that,” Sumrall said. “One thing I've been proud of with this football team that we have grown in that I don't think was here when we got here was, you've seen very few guys miss games. If they're missing a game, it's because there's something that's real.”
Florida will head to Austin hoping Brown can be part of the mix and that the team shows a different edge when it gets there.
The Gators and Longhorns kick off Saturday at noon ET.
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