GAINESVILLE - Florida’s climb has been fast enough to make the betting line look odd, at least to Jon Sumrall.
The Gators are No. 21, unbeaten at 3-0 and coming off a 44-39 win at Auburn. Ole Miss is No. 4, also 3-0, and fresh off an emotional 32-24 victory against then-No.
7 LSU and former coach Lane Kiffin in Oxford, Mississippi. Yet Florida entered the week as a 3.5-point favorite for Saturday’s showdown in the Swamp.
Sumrall did not exactly buy in.
“Who’s got us favored against these guys?” he said Monday when told of the line.
Vegas didn’t get much respect from him after that, either.
“There’s a lot of good drugs out there, huh?” he joked.
Still, Florida will lean into the underdog role this week, even while carrying the favorite tag at home. Sophomore receiver Vernell Brown III put it simply: “Nobody ever wins a game on paper.”
And the Swamp tends to tilt things its own way. Florida is expecting its 21st straight sellout Saturday, with Ole Miss and quarterback Trindad Chambliss coming into the 3:30 p.m. game in front of a packed house.
Chambliss has been the engine for the Rebels. The Heisman favorite leads the SEC with 308 passing yards per game, while completing 70% of his throws for seven touchdowns and two interceptions.
His 14-yard touchdown run with 6:14 left sealed the win over LSU and showed why he is such a problem for defenses. It was also the ninth time he has produced a go-ahead score in the fourth quarter, and it pushed his record as a starter to 14-2.
“They got the best quarterback in college football,” Sumrall said.
That was not a throwaway line. The Rebels have already seen what Chambliss can do to one of Sumrall’s teams. Ole Miss beat his 2025 Tulane squad twice by a combined 86-20, with Chambliss piling up 597 passing yards and three passing touchdowns, plus 148 rushing yards and two more scores.
“He’s as good a college football player I’ve ever seen with my own two eyes,” Sumrall said.
Florida’s offense has plenty going for it, too. Buster Faulkner’s group is scoring 54 points per game, a pace that calls back to the 2020 team led by Kyle Trask and a receiving corps headlined by Kyle Pitts and Kadarius Toney. Vernell Brown III said the group enjoys the rhythm it has found.
“It’s fun just going out there and being able to execute what we practice with my guys,” Brown said.
The Gators’ defensive effort against Auburn was not all clean, but it did include seven sacks. The bigger issue for Sumrall was what happened in key moments late, especially Auburn quarterback Byrum Brown’s 35-yard touchdown pass on fourth-and-13 with 24 seconds left that trimmed Florida’s lead to five.
“The last touchdown they had makes me want to puke watching it - just really bad football,” Sumrall said.
That was only part of the frustration. Florida has been flagged 23 times for 213 yards since the second half of its 52-3 win Sept. 12 against Campbell, and Sumrall made it clear Monday that the penalty problem has become a real issue. He said he disagreed with some of the calls and had sent a few to the SEC office for review, but he also made sure his team heard the message.
“We were not free of guilt on all of them,” he said. “There was plenty of them we were in the wrong. In the team meeting this morning, they got called out.
“There ain’t no hiding.”
He pointed to three penalties in particular: a taunting flag on tight end Evan Chieca after Jadan Baugh’s 53-yard touchdown, a personal foul by Caden Jones after a Patrick Durkin field goal and a personal foul on Dallas Wilson for blocking an Auburn defender who was out of bounds. Sumrall was more forgiving on Wilson’s call, saying the receiver showed the kind of edge the staff wants in a blocker.
Even so, he drew the line.
“Those are the three that we can’t do ever,” he said.
For all the points Florida is scoring, the message this week was not about style points or rankings. It was about realism. Sumrall showed the team the bad from Auburn and made the point that Ole Miss will punish the same mistakes.
“I showed them all the bad from the game and how that will cost us, and made very clear how good the opponent is this week,” he said. “If we play like we did last week or the previous week, really any of the weeks we played so far this year, we will not win Saturday.
“No chance.”
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Leavitts performance now sits at the center of a larger conversation about what LSU can and cannot ask of its offense in tough matchups. Kiffins defense of the quarterback offered some context, but it also underscored the bigger issue: the Tigers still need cleaner execution through the air if they want to turn pressure-packed games into wins. [Read more 🡒]