GAINESVILLE, Fla. - Pete Golding didn’t sugarcoat what Ole Miss walked into at Florida.
After a 52-28 loss Saturday, the Rebels’ coach called it an “old-fashioned butt whupping” and said the game exposed a deeper problem: not enough players willing to carry the kind of edge he believes it takes to fix what’s broken.
A week removed from an emotional 32-24 win over LSU and former coach Lane Kiffin, No. 4 Ole Miss went into the Swamp as the underdog and played like one.
Florida controlled the line of scrimmage, piled up 302 rushing yards and kept quarterback Trinidad Chambliss from taking over the game. Chambliss did throw for 298 yards, but two turnovers - including a costly fumble late in the third quarter - helped turn Ole Miss’ comeback push into another uphill climb.
Florida, for all intents and purposes, looked like the top-five team.
The Rebels now get an open date, and Golding made it clear he expects it to be used for more than recovery. He said he didn’t want his team to forget the feeling of the loss, and he compared it to the sting he carried after Miami beat him in last year’s CFP semifinal.
“I don't want them to get this taste out of their mouth,” Golding said. “That's what I told them.
I never got the taste out of my mouth from Miami walking off the field [in last year's CFP semifinal loss]. Part of the problem sometimes is we move on too fast.
The sun's going to come up tomorrow and it's a new day, but it's a new day to go get better at what we don't do well. You better have that burning in your gut to go fix something.
I think we have guys like that. We don't have enough guys like that right now.
“That was kind of the challenge right there. We get to choose.
That's the beautiful thing about this game. You get to choose whether you're going to go all in and do things right or not.”
Golding came into the season confident in his defense, but the run defense has been a problem through four games, and Florida took full advantage. Jadan Baugh and Duke Clark each went over 100 rushing yards, and Golding said the tackling was especially maddening.
Baugh now has 11 rushing touchdowns, tying Najee Harris in 2020 and Leonard Fournette in 2015 for the most by an SEC player through four games since conference expansion in 1992.
“We had a lot of guys trying to ankle bite, diving at ankles and all those things,” Golding said. “I addressed the manhood at halftime a little bit.
There was a lack of courage in my opinion, at times, that we were picking and choosing. That's an elite back, and he's a big back, and you've got to go chest-to-chest with him whether you like it or not.”
Linebacker Keaton Thomas said the message landed with some players and not others.
“I think some guys took it, and other guys didn't, and I think that showed in the second half. I'm going to make it evident, too, to call guys out and let them know that, if you don't want this, then you shouldn't have come here.”
Ole Miss also had to navigate the game without running back Kewan Lacy, who sat out with a left shoulder injury from last week against LSU. Golding brushed aside any suggestion that his absence explained the loss.
“I am not putting this game on Kewan Lacy at all,” Golding said.
“We came with 74 dudes,” he said. “That is plenty of guys.
This is not an excuse of who played and who did not play. We are a team, and it is always going to be the next-man-up mentality.”
The Rebels did show some life in the second half, scoring touchdowns on their first two drives of the third quarter and cutting the deficit to three points multiple times. But when Chambliss was sacked and fumbled with Ole Miss trailing 31-21, Florida turned that mistake into another touchdown and effectively put the game away.
The Gators scored touchdowns on five straight second-half possessions. Their only non-scoring drive was the final one, when they ran out the clock.
Chambliss now has five turnovers this season, already more than the three he had all of last year.
“I’m super confident in our team,” Chambliss said. “Florida, they were a good team.
I feel like if we were playing our best ball, things might have been different, but that didn't happen today. But the confidence in my team has never changed.
I still got the utmost confidence in my team. I feel like we can still compete for an SEC championship, in the national championship, but now, we just got to go another week and focus on one game at a time.”
Florida, meanwhile, keeps building momentum under first-year coach Jon Sumrall.
The Gators have scored at least 40 points in each of their first four games for the first time since 2001, when Steve Spurrier was coaching. Sumrall also became the first coach in SEC history to score 200-plus points in his first four games.
Even with that start, he wasn’t interested in grand declarations afterward.
“We have not arrived,” Sumrall said.
“I like the direction we're headed,” he said. “I'm not Eeyore, mad at life. I just want us to be the best we can be all the time.”
Baugh said the offense’s belief is driving the surge.
“If we stay where our feet are and focus on the task at hand, I don't feel like nobody in the world can stop us,” Baugh said.
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