Moments after Bryce Thornton secured the Florida Gators’ 24-17 upset win over #9 Ole Miss, the entire team sprinted down the field to the south end zone, where an impressive list of recruits had been watching the contest unfold, and began their celebration in earnest with some of their future teammates.
Their message was simple. Join us. And you, too, can be part of moments like this.
DJ Lagway threw a pair of touchdown passes, Montrell Johnson ran for another one out of the Wildcat, Bryce Thornton had a game for the ages and Florida seemingly squashed the Rebels’ College Football Playoff chances with perhaps the biggest win in Billy Napier’s life.
With the victory, the Florida Gators become bowl eligible with a 6-5 record. Only FSU– a horrendous team that sits at 2-9 amidst its worst season since before the arrival of Bobby Bowden– remains on the schedule. Even on the road, the Gators figure to be heavy favorites; take care of business in the state’s capital, and Florida would finish the regular season 7-5, shattering their Vegas win projection of 4.5 games.
That would be some feat given where this team was just a few short weeks ago.
Florida opened the season with a dreadful 41-17 loss to rival Miami in the Swamp, and was left for dead after being embarrassed on its home field again two weeks later by Texas A&M. For many– including yours truly– that seemed to be the point from which the Gators could not return under Napier. A few wins against overmatched opponents later, sandwiched around a horribly called game from Napier in an overtime loss to rival Tennessee, and Florida lost DJ Lagway in the Georgia game before getting curb-stomped once more, this time against Texas.
As little as nine days ago, the Florida Gators seemed stuck in a rut. You could point to injuries, and you could understand the loss of Lagway, but three losses in which Florida trailed by 26 points or more at various junctures in the contests– plus a game in which Napier outright handed away– served as just the latest points of frustration in what was a 15-19 record for Napier at Florida. With two games left against respectable opponents, things seemed likely to get even worse.
Two wins over top 25 teams later, and the world of Gator football has been completely flipped on its head. Never mind the fact that the Florida Gators hadn’t defeated ranked teams in consecutive weeks since 2008. After yesterday’s upset win over Mississippi, in which Florida’s coach defeated the man that many fans had pinpointed as the logical coach to replace him in Gainesville, not only has Billy Napier saved his job, but there are some rumblings about him deserving coach of the year honors.
Maybe that’s jumping the gun a bit. But there’s no doubting that this team looks different than it did earlier in the year.
A scoreless first quarter ended with Florida’s first true threat of the day. On the opening play of the second quarter, DJ Lagway lobbed a corner route to Elijhah Badger, who kicked his toe down in the orange paint as he caught the ball for a touchdown. Ole Miss would counter with a pair of touchdown passes from Jaxson Dart in response– one of which was set up by a Chimere Dike deflection that was picked off by John Saunders– to take a 14-7 lead.
But the Florida Gators would respond– for the first of several times on the day.
Lagway set up a screen pass to Jadan Baugh, who picked up some blockers and scooted 25 yards to the house to knot the game at 14. The teams swapped field goals in the third quarter to set up a tie game heading into the singing of We Are The Boys and Tom Petty.
Then another nice story unfurled itself. Senior Montrell Johnson, who had been with Napier since his freshman days at Louisiana and was playing his final game in the Swamp, trotted onto the field as the Gators began another drive at their own 33. That drive began with Lagway firing a 41 yard dart to Dike, who earned himself some nice redemption from his earlier drop. From there, Johnson carried the ball three straight times, picking up twelve and then five yards before taking a direct Wildcat snap and coasting nine yards to the orange paint to give the Gators a 24-17 lead.
That was when Bryce Thornton took over the game.
Filling in for the injured Aaron Gates, Thornton snuffed out Ole Miss’s threat to tie the game by snaring Dart’s overthrown heave in the end zone with 1:32 to go. Florida’s next drive went nowhere, although it did succeed in exhausting the Rebels’ allotment of timeouts. Ole Miss picked up a first down before Dart seemed victimized by a miscommunication and lofted a rainbow into no-man’s-land. Thornton cruised over to and snatched the descending ball out of the air for his second pick in the final two minutes to end the game.
From there, sheer pandemonium unfolded. The crowd erupted. The players stole Ole Miss’s celebration prop basketball hoop, lined up, and took turns dunking on it after they tore a path down the field toward the recruits’ section and celebrated with them. Some of those kids will play for the Florida Gators one day, and others won’t. But no matter where any individual spectator departed the Swamp that day for, it’s sure to be a day that will never be forgotten.
Lane Kiffin and the Rebels certainly helped make that the case. A missed chip-shot field goal and Kiffin’s insistence on ramming 325 pound defensive tackle JJ Pegues up the middle on fourth and short calls– getting stuffed twice inside the Florida 15 for turnovers on downs– will be lamented for months and maybe years on The Grove as the Rebels ponder what could have been in a CFP appearance had they won this game. Rebel receivers also dropped a pair of touchdown passes, one in each half– the second of which will certainly cause some angst this offseason in Oxford.
The loss had a lasting impact on former Florida defensive lineman Princely Umanmielen, too. After pulling up to Gainesville with a Florida ski mask over an Ole Miss quarter zip, the ex-Gator was a non-factor during the game and had a lil ahh temper tantrum after it. Various spectators and reporters’ cameras caught Umanmielen chasing after fans outside the Swamp and having to be restrained by law enforcement officers.
Umanmielen’s old team made its share of mistakes on this day as well.
Napier again botched the end-of-half sequence. His play-calling in the final minute was again too vanilla and bland– maybe a play-action, or RPO, or something other than straight handoffs between the tackles on any of the three plays– you know, play-calls that were designed to get a first down and end the game rather than hand it back to the Rebels one last time– was frustrating. Florida’s defensive line was again feast-or-famine, recording four sacks and seldom applying much pressure on plays in which they did not bring down Dart for a loss. And before Thornton ended the game for Florida, he was beaten for one of Dart’s two touchdown passes.
But the difference is, Florida was able to overcome its own mistakes and punish the Rebels for theirs. And with Ole Miss supposedly needing this game way more than Florida, the Gator team sure played like it was the one with its CFP hopes hanging in the balance. That’s something this program can build on heading into this offseason, assuming the Gators handle FSU next week.
FSU talk, though, can wait another day. Today is a day of celebration. For now, the Florida Gators appear to be continuing its ascent on a remarkable redemption story arc.
And given the subterranean depths this program reached earlier in this very season, that makes for quite a story that can be told for generations to come.
