(Photo credit: Gator football digital media team)
The Texas Longhorns’ first trip to the Swamp in 85 years defied expectations. Dallas Wilson exceeded them.
The true freshman receiver from Tampa exploded onto the scene in his debut with the Gator football program, baking the Texas defense to the tune of six catches for 111 yards and a pair of touchdowns. As it turns out, all three of those statistics are records for a Florida football debut. And thanks to Florida’s defense harassing Arch Manning all day and making some big plays of its own, Wilson’s huge day was enough.
Jadan Baugh carried the ball 27 times for 107 yards, Florida’s defense sacked Manning six times and picked him off twice, and embattled Florida QB DJ Lagway fought through an injury to throw for 298 yards as Florida stunned #9 Texas, 29-21. It’s Florida’s first win over Texas in five tries. More importantly, the win snaps a three-game losing streak that buried Florida in a 1-3 hole to begin the 2025 season.
The Florida victory also serves as a nice little bit of revenge for last year’s meeting between the two teams, a 49-17 Texas rout in Austin. Florida may not have been able to match the lopsided-ness of that game, but the Gators did deal a serious blow to Texas’ hopes of returning to the College Football Playoff. With the Longhorns now sitting at 3-2 on the season, Steve Sarkisian’s club is out of mulligans and will have to win out– including games against Oklahoma, Georgia, and Texas A&M– to have a realistic shot at getting back there.
This wasn’t the air show between two Heisman Trophy candidates it was billed to be for the past nine months. It was much more of a battle of trench warfare, with both teams leaning heavily on their running games on a day where points were at a premium.
And that style of football still leaves a lot to be desired for many Gator fans, who grew up with Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer scoring points by the truckload.on the strength of an unstoppable multi-pronged offensive attack.
No matter. Billy Napier will take any win he can get his hands on for his Gator football team right now. Such is life when a big upset win over a name-brand program improves your record as the Gator football coach to 21-22.
The first surprise out of the gate was the Florida OL’s ability to create room for Jadan Baugh to move– particularly off the right side, which has been a weakness for Florida so far this year. But not this time. Florida calmly took the ball and ran it right down Texas’ throat for a 13 play, 84 yard touchdown jaunt to begin the game. Baugh finished the drive with a nice cutback to the right and trotted in from five yards out to open the scoring.
Even though Florida’s second drive stalled and Trey Smack was forced to kick a field goal, it felt like Florida might actually run away with the game– until, that is, Hayden Hansen fumbled after pulling in a reception from Lagway. Texas recovered, and scored moments later to put an end to any “blowout” idea.
But Lagway was up for the challenge. He completed passes of 19 yards to J. Michael Sturdivant, 18 more to Wilson, and then 13 to Wilson again over the middle for an easy touchdown to make it 17-7 Florida. And Florida’s momentum only multiplied when Taylor Spierto blocked a punt out the back of the end zone for two more points.
As is common for Billy Napier, though, Florida didn’t seem to have any interest in building on that momentum. Instead, Florida’s first drive of the third quarter went three and out on two runs and a screen pass, and then the Gators failed to capitalize on a 60 yard bomb from Lagway to Vernell Brown III on the next drive, settling for another field goal from Smack to make it 22-7.
At that point, the Texas offense finally woke up– but too late. Manning’s 38 yard touchdown pass to Ryan Wingo momentarily brought the score down to 22-14, but that was replied to with Wilson’s 55 yard catch and run through the Texas defense to immediately return the Longhorns to a two-score deficit. Wilson capitalized on his defender slipping at the line to become wide open streaking down the sideline; from there, he managed to navigate around two different Texas defenders trying to shove him out of bounds, pirouetting through their lunging arms and stomping into the end zone.
From there, the two teams traded interceptions before Texas’ Quintrevion Wisner plowed into the end zone with three and a half minutes to go to draw within one score again. Florida failed to run the clock out offensively, so they punted it back to Texas, leaving the door ajar for the Longhorns to put up one last gasp with :46 left.
They never got the chance. Kamran James and Jayden Woods sacked Manning, ripping his helmet off by accident in the process. That forced backup QB Matthew Caldwell into the game for one play, on which completed a 26 yard pass to Wingo to get near midfield and even got a facemark penalty tacked on to the gain to advance the ball into Gator territory. But then Manning was promptly welcomed back into the game by George Gumbs with sack number six on the day, which proceeded to drain the rest of the clock.
As the officials confirmed the game clock was no more, the Gator football team jubilantly spilled onto the field in celebration. This wasn’t a College Football Playoff game, or even a de facto play-in game, mind you. It wasn’t a blowout win over a rival to emphatically snap a losing streak in that rivalry series, it wasn’t a milestone number win for their head coach, and it didn’t unseat the defending national champion or SEC Champion. It didn’t even put Florida back to .500 on the year.
But for all the criticisms– however damning– that Billy Napier has earned throughout his time at Florida, he sure seems to know how to get his team to take a last stand for him. As the townspeople of Gainesville seemed to be reaching for their pitchforks last November, Florida ripped off four wins in a row to finish 2024, two of which came against ranked opponents, to almost magically pull an 8-5 final record out of thin air. And now Napier’s done it again.
On the same day that the SEC Nation studio was hijacked with Florida fans chanting “Fire Billy!” Napier’s team shocked the #9 team in the land with a few elements of football they hadn’t proven capable of to this point. Florida’s defense has been solid, for the most part, but it struggled at creating pressure and taking the ball away through its first four games. And Lagway, once upon a time the Gatorade High School Player of the Year and a prized five-star signee, shook off a terrible first month of the season to lead his team to victory.
Neither Lagway nor the defense were perfect, to be sure. Feel-good story corner Cormani McClain had a rough game, including getting beat deep for the touchdown to Wingo, after a tremendous first month. And Lagway– perhaps still (or again?) struggling with an injury, missed a couple of easy throws and threw an ill-advised pick late in the fourth quarter.
But at least Gator football has a pulse again. The College Football Playoff dreams are on life support, and in fact Florida still has an uphill battle ahead just to make it to a bowl game. None of these prognoses do any favors for Billy Napier’s job security, because after losing to USF at home and then losing your next two games as well to fall to 1-3, Napier’s bed is already made. It’s not about that.
Just for a brief moment, Gator football was fun again. And I don’t mean for much of the 90,714 that packed the Swamp for this one. No, I meant for the people within those buildings.
In the sense of how much of Napier’s prior damage this win over Texas will undo, it’s about as thorough and long-lasting of a repair job as putting a band-aid over a bullet hole wound. Sure, it might do something to stop the blood from pouring out everywhere for a second or two, but it doesn’t do anything to address the actual injury, which is causing all the problems. It’s cosmetic only.
And yet– we’re allowed to have that. A cosmetic-only fix that only temporarily masks the deeper, intrinsic issues is OK for now. We know this program needs major surgery at the end of the season, and it’s become pretty clear over the past few weeks that we’re going to get it. In the interim, we’ll happily take the quick satisfaction of a stray win over a team that might have just had its own Playoff dreams dashed.
Who knows? Maybe we’ll even get to relive this feeling in the weeks to come.
