Congrats on your first win against Kentucky in three tries, Billy Napier. (Photo via Florida Gators athletics)
After weeks of being blown out at home, doing just enough to skirt by overmatched opponents, and one game in which Billy Napier single-handedly gave a football game away to a rival, the Florida Gators got to play on cruise control.
And they enjoyed every minute of it.
Freshman sensation QB DJ Lagway shined in his first ever SEC start, Jadan Baugh tied a school record with five touchdown runs, and the Florida defense did more than enough as the Gators exorcised their demons against Kentucky, 48-20. The Florida win snaps a three-game losing streak to Kentucky, and serves as Florida’s first win over an SEC team in the Swamp since October 7, 2023. More importantly, gives Billy Napier and Florida a slight glimmer of hope heading into the home stretch of their schedule.
For Billy Napier, the win cools talk about his status as the Gators’ coach, if only temporarily. Napier improves to 15-17 at Florida with the win, including 10-17 against Power Five opponents.
Kentucky certainly helped with his latest win.
DJ Lagway started the contest by finding Tre Wilson open for a 40 yard gain, but the Gator offense– picking up right where it left off a week ago in the red zone– sputtered and forced a Trey Smack field goal. The Gators’ next foray into the red zone also died out. Smack, to his credit, connected on this field goal too.
After frying Florida’s defense on a flea-flicker to tie the game at 6-6, Kentucky then botched the ensuing extra point to leave the game tied– a harbinger of bad things to come for the Wildcats. A few possessions later, Lagway unleashed another bomb, this one to Elijah Badger, for a 50 yard pickup. Unlike the prior two drives to reach the red zone, this one ended in the desired result, a seven yard touchdown jaunt by Baugh.
That was when the Kentucky offense– notorious for its struggles all year– came unglued.
Brock Vandagriff uncorked a wounded duck that two different Wildcat receivers got their paws on before Trikweze Bridges dove on it for the pick. Lagway then appeared to be victimized by a miscommunication of sorts, throwing the ball right back to Kentucky’s Christian Story, who took it back to the Florida eleven. But facing a fourth and one at the Florida two, the Wildcat offensive line was mauled at the point of attack and Demie Sumo-Karngbaye was slapped back across the top of the pile on the line of scrimmage for a turnover on downs.
Lagway, as the great ones do, made the Cats pay for their failures. After Baugh took off for a 27 yard run to get Florida out of the hole, he promptly launched another bomb to Badger for 58 more yards. Two plays later, Baugh exploited some great blocking from Damieon George and sauntered in for his second touchdown of the night.
Then came another Kentucky gift. Vandagriff found a wide open Barion Brown via a seam in the Gator defense, but Brown couldn’t catch it. Florida’s Devin Moore could, though. And he did. And he raced back 45 yards the other way with it to set up a third Baugh touchdown to make it 27-6.
True to form, the Florida Gators couldn’t just take that big lead and drop the guillotine. They had to let Kentucky make a game of it, albeit just for a few moments. A kick return touchdown just before halftime and a long Kentucky drive to start the third quarter cut the Florida lead to 27-20.
But then Lagway took command of the game, dicing up the Wildcats’ defense on the next drive for chunk plays of 23 yards and 44 yards, and when Baugh plowed into the end zone for a fourth time to make the score 34-20 with three minutes left in the third quarter, the game was all but over.
From there, the Florida defense tightened and never let Kentucky establish any rhythm again. The score remained 34-20 until Baugh seemingly put the cork in the bottle with touchdown run number five, blasting in to make it 41-20 with 3:31 left in the contest. And the Swamp turned into a party zone.
But as it turned out, the Florida Gators had one more celebration in them. Walk-on cornerback Cormani McClain, battling his way onto the field the hard way after a roller-coaster of a recruitment process and freshman year at Colorado, saw his first action in the secondary– and he made it count. The Lakeland native jumped a passing route and capped the scoring with a 29-yard pick six. That touched off the wildest celebration of the night, in which Napier encouraged his team to go and take an excessive celebration penalty by sprinting to join him in the end zone, not unlike the way in which Mark Richt ordered Georgia to do so in 2007 (except at the end of the game).
As the dust settles and the euphoria begins to wear off, though, it’s back to reality for the Florida Gators.
Florida beat Kentucky, which is a positive. Florida beating Kentucky is also something this program did 31 straight times from 1987 to 2017, meaning it should be something the Gators are used to. Beating the Wildcats is the expectation, not the goal.
In other words, it’s good that the embarrassing results Kentucky has handed Florida in each of the last three years were not replicated for a fourth straight time, but Kentucky is not a measuring stick game for Florida. That comes in two weeks, against mighty Georgia, fresh off a road win against the #1 team in the country.
Is this team actually building momentum, or did Billy Napier & Co. just catch a terrible Kentucky team amidst its natural free-fall? I guess we’ll know then.
Florida also lost a four-star recruit today, offensive lineman Joseph Mbatchou. That’s the second decommitment of a four-star prospect for Florida in the last fourteen days, and the third in the last month. The Gators have also not gained a single recruit since the start of the season. Clearly, recruits aren’t that positive on the program, and it’s going to take more than beating a Kentucky team that’s 3-4 with the 115th ranked offense in the FBS to convince them to come aboard.
Yes, it’s great that Florida did something to merit the slightest bit of positivity among the fanbase. But if Billy Napier or his apologists think beating the worst Kentucky team since COVID is going to move the needle, they’re sorely mistaken. All that did was buy him the chance to slay two of the biggest giants in the sport in his next two games– and if Napier goes 0-2 against Georgia and Texas, then– for whatever amount of progress has or has not been made in recent weeks– we’ll be three years into Napier’s tenure, and no closer to national relevance than we were the day he was hired.