After dropping consecutive games, Florida had started sliding down the bowl projection ladder. Then came the road win over No. 7 Texas, and suddenly the Gators are climbing back in the conversation.
ESPN’s Kyle Bonagura and Mark Schlabach both bumped Florida up in their latest projections. A week earlier, Bonagura had the Gators in the Union Home Mortgage Gasparilla Bowl on December 18th, while Schlabach slotted them into the AutoZone Liberty Bowl in Memphis, Tenn. against Baylor on January 2nd. Now, both have Florida staying much closer to home.
Bonagura projects the Gators against Pittsburgh in the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl in Jacksonville on December 30th. Schlabach has Florida facing Nebraska in the ReliaQuest Bowl at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa on December 31st.
That’s a better outlook, sure. But Florida’s attention is pointed somewhere much bigger than a bowl upgrade.
A College Football Playoff berth looked like a long shot just a week ago. Then the Gators went into Austin and beat Texas, and a chaotic weekend around the country opened the door a little wider. Five of the top seven teams lost, giving two-loss teams like Florida a little more room to dream.
The Gators are back in the Top 25 at No. 20 after the win, and they’ll get another major test after the bye week when they face No. 5 Georgia on Halloween. Georgia also lost over the weekend, but Florida’s path is still simple: beat the Bulldogs, and the Texas win starts looking like something far more meaningful.
With Georgia and No. 12 Kentucky still ahead, a 10-2 Florida team would be awfully hard to keep out of the College Football Playoff.
Still, Jon Sumrall isn’t interested in letting the noise get ahead of the results. He liked what his team did against Texas, but he made it clear that one win doesn’t buy anything for the next week.
“We got better today," Sumrall said after the game. 'It does nothing (for tomorrow). If we've learned anything about this, in this game or in life, you don't get to go, 'Hey, I was good last week, so I get to be good next week,' right?"
He also pointed back to the Missouri loss as a reminder of what happens when praise gets ahead of performance.
"I guess part of why we got our ass kicked in Missouri and last week at home is because we, everybody around Gainesville was patting our guys on the back telling them how good they were, and I'm like, 'Guys, we suck. Like I've watched this practice; we're not very good.'
We still suck. We
just suck less, all right. And so we have to figure out to suck less each week."
If Florida carries the Texas win into the Georgia game and keeps “sucking less” every week, the Gators will have a real shot to turn this late-season surge into a Playoff push.
In Other News...
Tramell Jones Jr. Just Gave Florida A Reason To Believe
A freshman making his first career start is rarely asked to steady a program against a top-10 opponent, but Tramell Jones Jr. walked into that kind of assignment and gave Florida exactly the kind of calm it needed. The Gators rallied from a 17-3 deficit to beat seventh-ranked Texas 27-24, and Jones played a central role in getting them back into it, completing 22 of 35 passes for 155 yards and two touchdowns.
For Florida, the win was about more than surviving an early hole. It was about seeing a young quarterback handle pressure, keep the offense moving and give the Gators a chance when the game tightened late. The defense finished the job with a late fumble by Texas quarterback Arch Manning, but the bigger takeaway in Gainesville is hard to miss: there is at least a reason to believe Florida has found something it can build on. [Read more 🡒]
Florida Suddenly Has A Bigger Opportunity Than Anyone Expected
Floridas win over Texas came at exactly the right time, giving Billy Napiers team a needed jolt after a season that has already swung from a 4-0 start to back-to-back losses. The bigger picture around college football has been just as unpredictable, with results across several conferences reshuffling expectations almost every week, and Florida has managed to keep itself in the conversation despite the early turbulence.
With the bye week now in hand, the Gators are in a better spot than many projected before the season, both in the SEC race and in the overall record chase. The Texas victory did more than settle things down for a day, too, because it left Floridas preseason goals still within reach as the schedule moves into its next stretch. [Read more 🡒]
BYU Just Turned The Big 12 Race Into Something Much Bigger
A wild Saturday across college football sent shockwaves through the AP poll, and BYU was one of the biggest beneficiaries after upsetting Notre Dame to climb to No. 2. The chaos was unprecedented, with five of the top seven teams losing on the same day for the first time in AP history, and Miami surged to No. 1 after its double-overtime win against Florida State.
For Florida fans, the broader picture is just as striking because the Gators were part of a day that helped redraw the national conversation in a hurry. Ohio State held off Indiana, Tennessee beat Alabama, Florida knocked off Texas, and Auburn beat Georgia, turning what could have been a routine Saturday into a rankings reset that left the Big 12 race and the rest of the playoff picture looking far more volatile than before. [Read more 🡒]